Meaning & use
forebear
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Meanings
nounusually pluralformal
A person in your family line who lived long before you, such as a great-grandparent or someone further back.
Grammar: Most often plural and followed by possessive: our forebears.
Patterns
- someone's forebears
Her forebears came to the valley in the early 1800s.
He liked to imagine what his forebears would think of modern life.
The museum shows how our forebears cooked, farmed and built their houses.
nouncountablefigurative
A person or group from the past who started a tradition or way of doing things that others later followed.
Grammar: Often used for earlier workers or thinkers: intellectual forebears.
Patterns
- a forebear of something
Early printers were the forebears of today's publishers.
The band cited blues singers as their musical forebears.
Modern nurses honor the forebears who first cared for the sick.
Word forms
| plural | forebears |
|---|
Common combinations
- distant forebears
- His distant forebears were fishermen from the northern coast.
- our forebears
- Our forebears survived harsher winters than ours.
- noble forebears
- She boasted of her noble forebears.
- proud of one's forebears
- He was proud of his forebears and their hard work.
- trace one's forebears
- They used old records to trace their forebears back to Ireland.
Synonyms and how they differ
- ancestor
- Ancestor is the standard everyday word, while forebear sounds more formal and solemn.
- predecessor
- Predecessor usually means the person who held a job or role before you, not a blood relative.
- forefather
- Forefather is traditionally male and often evokes founders, whereas forebear is neutral.
- progenitor
- Progenitor is a stiffer word for a direct originator of a line, and it can also mean the source of an idea.
Opposites
Word family
- forebearer noun
- a rare variant spelling of forebear
- forefather noun
- a male ancestor
- ancestor noun
- a family member from the past
Commonly confused: forebear or forbear?
forebear vs forbear
Forbear is a verb meaning to hold back from doing something, as in forbear from comment, and it is spelled with only one e before the a.
Practice
The village museum celebrates the farmers who were the ____ of today's residents.
Choose one answer.
Forebears means ancestors. Forbears is a misspelling here (the verb forbear means to refrain) and the other options name unrelated roles.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “forebear”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.