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fore

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Pronunciation

fore1 before, front

Etymology

The adverb and preposition are inherited from Middle English fore, inherited from Old English fore (“before, in front of; because of, for the sake of”),[2][3][4][5] from Proto-Germanic *fura (“before”).[2][6] Its cognates include Old Frisian fara, Old Saxon fora, Old High German fora (modern German vor), Dutch voor, Old Norse fyrir and Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌰 (faura).[7][2][3][4] It has the same Germanic source as for,[3][8] and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *per- (“forward”),[2][6][9] the root also of Latin prō, prae and per.[10] From the 13th century it merged with shortened forms of afore and before.[2] From the 16th century it was often taken as an abbreviation of before and written with an apostrophe.[2][7][10] The adjective has a separate formation: it was abstracted in the late 15th century from compounds with the prefix fore-, such as forepart, which were sometimes written as two words, so that the first part came to be treated as an adjective;[7][3][11][12] the noun came from the adjective.[3][13] Hoad suggests a Low German origin for the nautical adverb of fore and aft,[11] and Dictionary.com takes the phrase as perhaps a translation from Dutch or Low German.[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

As a preposition, before, in front of: about 725, in Beowulf.[3][7] As an adverb, before, previously, it is recorded from about 750,[3] and in the OED from King Alfred's translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care.[7]

Semantic evolution

In Old English the preposition also meant "because of", "for the sake of", "in defence of" and "in exchange for", senses it shared with for and lost by the 16th and 17th centuries.[2][7] Etymonline notes that the word has now been displaced by before.[2] The preposition survives in English and American regional speech, and, now archaic, in oaths.[7][8] The adjective meant "former, earlier" from 1490, in Caxton, until the early 18th century, and "situated in front" from the early 16th century, in Dunbar.[7][3][10] The noun began in the phrase to the fore, at first Scottish: "available, ready to hand" of money or resources from 1596, and "present, still alive" of a person from the 1630s, a use that passed into Irish English.[7][11][3] From 1826 it meant "in or to a prominent position", as in to come to the fore.[7][11] In nautical use the adverb means "toward the bows", and fore and aft from stem to stern.[2][11][14] In Scots and northern dialects the word appears in many compounds and forms, such as foor-, fair- and fer-.[15]

Timeline

  • c. 725 – preposition, in front of (Beowulf).[3][7]
  • c. 750 – adverb, before, previously (obsolete by 1609).[3][7]
  • c. 1225 – beforehand, in advance (obsolete by 1500).[7]
  • before 1325 – forward in space, forth.[7]
  • 1490 – adjective, former, earlier (Caxton).[7][3]
  • before 1513 – adjective, situated in front (Dunbar).[7][3]
  • 1596 – to the fore, available, ready to hand (Scottish).[7]
  • 1637 – noun, to the fore of a person, present, on the spot.[7][8]
  • 1826 – to the fore, in a conspicuous position.[7]
  • 1888 – noun, the fore part of anything, such as the bow of a ship.[7]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Situated at or toward the front; forward, as opposed to back or hind: the fore legs of a deer.[16][8][7]
  2. Earlier in time; former, previous; obsolete for the OED (1490–1718) and the Shorter Oxford, but still listed by Merriam-Webster.[8][7][10]

Noun

  1. Something situated at the front, such as the foremast, the bow of a ship, a forequarter or a foreleg.[8][16][7]
  2. to the fore: into a prominent or conspicuous position: New problems came to the fore.[16][7]
  3. to the fore (Scottish and Irish): still alive, present or available.[16][7]

Adverb

  1. At or toward the front, especially toward the bow of a ship.[8][16] fore and aft: from bow to stern.[16][11]
  2. (obsolete) Before, at an earlier time, previously.[8][16][7]

Preposition

  1. (dialect or archaic) Before; in the presence of, chiefly in oaths.[8][7]

Word family

  • fore-and-aft
  • fore-and-after
  • forehead
  • foremast
  • foreshore
  • forecheck

fore2 golf warning

Etymology

The golfer's warning cry is probably a clipping from English before,[7][8][3][2][4] or an aphetic form of either before or afore.[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A warning shouted to anyone in the probable line of flight of a golf ball: 1878, in “Captain Crawley”'s Football, Golf and Shinty.[7][8][3]

Semantic evolution

Wright's dialect dictionary records it as a Scottish cry of golfers to someone standing or moving in the way of the ball.[15] Hendrickson notes that the cry is much younger than golf itself, and suggests that it arose when the harder golf ball came into use at about that time.[17]

Timeline

  • 1878 – first record, as a golfers' warning.[7][3][2]

Meanings

Interjection

  1. Used by a golfer to warn anyone who may be hit by a ball in flight.[8][18][7][15]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  5. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  10. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  13. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  15. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  16. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  17. ^ Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
  18. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin