forego

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English forgon, also forgan,^[2][3] inherited from Old English foregān (“to go before, precede”),^{[4][5][6][2][7]} formed from Old English fore- + gān (“to go”).^[4][5][6][2] Etymonline compares the similar formations Dutch voorgaan, German vorgehen and Danish foregaa.^[5] The verb forgo, to do without, has a separate source in Old English forgān, with the prefix for-.^[6][8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

To go before, precede: in the Old English translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, in a sentence about something that went before the sun, and intransitively in the Vespasian Psalter.^[4][7] Bosworth–Toller quotes a psalter verse in which mercy and truth "go before thy face", glossing Latin praecēdō.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The verb has kept its sense of going before in place or time, but it is now archaic except in its participles:^[10][11][12] foregoing, preceding, recorded as an adjective from 1530 and described by Etymonline from the mid-15th century,^[4][5] and foregone, past, from 1609 in Shakespeare's Sonnets.^[4] The phrase foregone conclusion comes from Shakespeare's Othello (1622), where commentators have read it in several ways;^[4][12] Etymonline argues that Othello meant an act already done, and that the modern sense, a decision formed before the case is argued, is not necessarily Shakespeare's.^[5] A rare noun, something that goes before, is recorded from 1880.^[4] The spelling forego was also used for forgo: Johnson (1755) entered forego with the senses "to quit; to give up", quoting Spenser.^[13]

Timeline

• Old English – to go before, precede, in place or time.^[4][7]
• 1880 – noun, something that goes or happens before (rare).^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (archaic) To go before; to precede in place or time: A herald forewent the procession.^{[10][2][14][4]}
2. A variant spelling of forgo: to do without; to give up or relinquish.^{[6][15][10][11]}

Word family

• foregoer
• foregoing
• foregone

Related words

• forgo
• go
• fore-

Usage notes

Many writers keep forgo for "to do without" and forego for "to go before",^[1] and Grammarphobia regrets that recent dictionaries list the two spellings as variants of each other;^[9] the American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate and the Oxford Dictionary of English all record forego as a variant of forgo.^[6][15][10] The sense "precede" is found mostly in the participles: the foregoing, what has just been said, and a foregone conclusion.^[12][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b O'Conner, Patricia T.; Kellerman, Stewart, The Grammarphobia Blog, grammarphobia.com, p. "Is it forego … or forgo?", 19 February 2007
10. ^ a b c d Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster