Forebear

Alternative forms

• forbear

Origin

From - + beer("one who is or exists"). More at beer.

Full definition of forebear

Noun

1. An ancestor.
• 1906 2004, Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, Ethel Wedgwood tr.Sirs, I am quite sure that the King of England's forbears rightly and justly lost the conquered lands that I hold ...
• 1936 2004, Raymond William Firth, We the Tikopia http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=Eiji-EnuhXUC&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&sig=aB2VV0fcWv6lkQPQatQQbDhlm_8One does not take one’s family name therefrom, and again the position of the mother in that group is determined through her father and his male forbears in turn; this too is a patrilineal group.
• 1997, H. L. Hix, Understanding W. S. Merwin http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=8JIveUt8StQC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&sig=_AETFoZUYlti38_Va0zOHD4yZTkBeginning with the bald declaration “I think I was cold in the womb,” the speaker in “The Forbears” then decides that his brother (who died soon after birth) must also have been cold in the womb, like his grandfather John and the forbears who antedated John.
• 2013-06-14, Jonathan Freedland, Obama's once hip brand is now tainted, Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.

Usage notes

Not to be confused with: forbear verb.

Antonyms

• afterbear

Verb

1. Obsolete spelling of forbear

Anagrams

• forbeare