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Forebear (also spelled, less commonly, as forbear) was first used by our ancestors in the days of Middle English. Fore- means "coming before," just as in forefather, and -bear means "one that is." This -bear is not to be confused with the -bear in the unrelated verb forbear, which comes from Old English beran, meaning "to bear or carry." The -bear in the noun forebear is a combination of be-, from the verb be (or, more specifically, from been, an old dialect variant of be), and -ar, a form of the suffix -er, which we append to verbs to denote one that performs a specified action. In this case the "action" is simply existing or being—in other words, -bear implies one who is a "be-er."
Examples of forebear in a Sentence
Peter Brannen, Quanta Magazine, 15 Sep. 2025
The album only passingly cares about the signature dance-pop gunk of its 2010s and ’20s peers and forebears and doesn’t (like songs by Gomez, Addison Rae, and others) spend much time exploring Lana Del Rey as a subgenre.
—Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 3 Sep. 2025
Like such country forebears as Whitley, Skaggs, Vince Gill and Chris Stapleton, the Sunnyside, Washington native started out playing bluegrass, even as he was enamored early on with the music of Strait and Whitley.
—Jessica Nicholson, Billboard, 29 Aug. 2025
Once upon a time, scholars thought that human evolution was a march of progress in which our forebears evolved in linear fashion from an apelike ancestor to a series of increasingly humanlike forms.
—Kate Wong, Scientific American, 13 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for forebear
Cite this Entry
“Forebear.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forebear. Accessed 21 Sep. 2025.
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