forby, foreby, hard by, near. Spenser, F. Q. i. 6. 39; v. 2. 54; by, id., v. 11. 17. ME. forby (Barbour’s Bruce, x. 345).
force. Of force, of necessity, Bacon, Adv. Learning, ii. 5. 2; on force, Heywood and Rowley, Fortune by Land, &c., ii. 1 (John); Works, vi. 381; force perforce, by violent constraint, King John, iii. 1. 142; 2 Hen. IV, iv. 1. 116; to hunt at force, to run the game down with dogs instead of slaying with weapons, B. Jonson, Sad Shepherd, i. 2 (Robin).
force. It is force, it is of consequence or importance; usually negative, it is no force, it does not matter, no force, no matter, what force? what matter?; ‘No force for that, for it is ordered so’, Wyatt, The Courtier’s Life (Works, ed. Bell, 217). ME. no force, no fors, no matter, no consequence; what fors, what matter (Chaucer). Cp. Anglo-F. force ne fet, it makes no force, it matters not (Bozon).
force, to trouble oneself, care; ‘I force it not’, I reck not of it, I care not for it, Mucedorus, Induction, 68; it forceth not, it matters not, it is not material, Stubbes, Anat. Abuses (ed. Furnivall, 52). See NED. (s.v. Force, vb.1 14 b).
fordo, to destroy, overcome. Hamlet, ii. 1. 103. OE. fordōn, to destroy.
fore-, prefix; often miswritten for the prefix for-, as in forespent for forspent. See under [for-].
forehand: in phr. forehand (shaft), an arrow used for shooting straight before one. Ascham, Toxoph. p. 126; 2 Hen. IV, iii. 2. 52; former, previous, Much Ado, iv. 1. 51; foremost, leading, Butler, Hud. ii. 2. 618; in the front, the mainstay, Tr. and Cr. i. 3. 143.
forelay, to lie in wait for. Dryden, Palamon, i. 493; also, to hinder, Dryden, tr. of Virgil, Aeneid xi, 781.
forepoynted, appointed beforehand. Gascoigne, Hermit’s Tale, § 2; ed. Hazlitt, ii. 141.
fore-right, right on, straight ahead. Beaumont and Fl., Knt. of Malta, ii. 3. 8; said of a favourable wind, Massinger, Renegado, v. 8 (Aga). In prov. use in Devon and Cornwall in the sense of straight forward (EDD.).