Difference between revisions of "For- - fore-"

Revision as of 14:39, 18 December 2019

The prefixes for- and fore- are confused, and have been confused since the Old English period. Occasionally it is important to distinguish the two spellings, as in forego - forgo and forbear - forebear. With other words, the variation may be permissible, often because there is no ambiguity - only one meaning exists. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that for- (without the '-e') has several possible meanings. Fore- has only one central meaning.

• For- is the descendant of three separate Old Germanic prefixes fer-, fra- and fur-). The uses and meanings of these seem always to have been blurred. In Present-day English, the main meanings, with some examples, are:
  • 'away' or 'off'. This use is largely obsolete, although it survives to some extent in 'to forgive', which was originally 'to remit [or give away) a debt [of money]', and came to be 'to give away (or up) one's right to revenge [for a wrong committed]'.
  • Prohibition, as in 'forbid', or 'to order not to do something', and the archaic for(e)fend, which means much the same. Shakespeare not uncommonly uses the formulas "Heaven forfend", meaning 'May [the Deity] prevent or forbid [something ill-omened from happening]".
  • Abstaining from something (deliberately) as in 'forbear' and 'forsake', or neglecting to do something, as in 'forget' ('to lose one's memory of').
  • A sense almost entirely obsolete since Early Modern English of 'wrongly', or 'mistakenly', often with overtones of bad things happening; 'being overpowered'; being 'exhausted' or 'tired out'; and with a sense of being very complete in effect. ('Forbruised' meant 'bruised all over'.)
  • With adjectives, the general force of for- is to intensify. 'forlorn' (from lorn, the -ed participle of a Middle English form of 'to lose') means 'to be completely lost', 'abandoned' or 'desolate'.
• Fore-, as it looks, is connected with 'before'. It has the general sense of 'in front of', either in time or in space.
  • The forehead is in the front of the skull - the face between the eyebrows and the hair; the forename is that part of a person's name usually preceding the surname in British culture.
  • In a sexist culture, forefathers are ancestors, and a bad omen may foreshadow some catastrophe - which a prophet may foretell, or 'predict': sometimes, a person may foresee some coming events, either in an example of mystical, supernatural vision, or in a more rational effort of reasoned foresight. If the catastrophe is a flood or a hurricane, warning may have been given in a weather forecast. A golfer may forewarn others on the course that a ball is coming their way (by shouting "Fore!")
  • A forecourt is the open space in front of a building, such as a petrol station. In ships, the 'foremast is the mast nearest the front of the vessel, and the 'foredeck stretches from around there to the bow.
  • In Scotland, as in the Royal Navy, the 'forenoon' is the term, more precise than 'morning', for that period of the day which ends at 12:00. (Ashore, 'Morning' ends elastically - usually at the time of the 'mid-day meal', which may not be taken at mid-day: nowadays, it is more usually around 12:30 or 1:00. In naval terms, even more precisely, the morning watch is from 04:00 to 08:00 and the forenoon watch from 08:00 to 12:00.)

The confusion between these two can be illustrated by the common adverb and adjective forward - forwards, which is spelled without the '-e-' although demonstrably derived from the prefix originally spelled fore; and see also forbear - forebear.