forefront

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English forfrount, also forefrount,^[2][3] formed from Middle English fore- + frount (“front”).^[2][4][5][6] Etymonline and Klein call it a hybrid, with a native first part and a second part from Latin:^[7][8] fore is from Old English fore (“before, in front of”),^[7] while front is from Old French front (“forehead, brow”), from Latin frōns (“forehead, brow; front”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The principal face or foremost part of something, especially of a building: 1488, in Hary's Wallace (composed about 1478), where it is contrasted with a back front.^[4] Barnhart dates the word to before 1450,^[6] and Dictionary.com to 1425–75.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline notes that it was used first of buildings and later of battles, and that the main modern sense, the foremost place in some field of action, grew out of the military one, the front rank of an army.^[7] That military sense is recorded from 1513, in Gavin Douglas's translation of the Aeneid, and the figurative sense from 1589, in Nashe; the OED calls the figurative use now the most frequent.^[4] Weekley traces the figurative use to "the forefront of the battle" in the Bible (2 Samuel 11:15) and notes that the word first meant a façade.^[9] The sense "beginning of a book or document" (1577) is obsolete or archaic,^[4] and the literal sense "front of a building" is now rare.^[4][5] Browning used it in 1880 for the front of the body.^[4] A rare verb, to give a building a new forefront, is recorded from 1761, in Sterne's Tristram Shandy.^[4][2]

Timeline

• before 1450 – first record of the word, by Barnhart's dating.^[6]
• 1488 – the front part of something, especially of a building.^[4]
• 1513 – the front rank of an army.^[4][7]
• 1577 – the beginning of a book or document (now obsolete or archaic).^[4]
• 1589 – figurative, the leading or most important place.^[4][5]
• 1761 – verb, to build a new forefront to.^[4]
• 1880 – the front of the body.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The leading or most important position or place; the vanguard: The company was at the forefront of solar research.^[2][5][4]
2. The front rank of an army.^[4][5]
3. (rare) The front part or face of something, especially of a building; a façade.^[4][5]

Verb

1. (rare) To provide with a forefront.^[2][4]

Related words

• fore
• front
• forehead
• foremost

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray