A glossary of Tudor and Stuart words, especially from the dramatists

by Walter W. Skeat

foreset. Of foreset, of set purpose, purposely. Ferrex and Porrex, ii. 2, chorus, 13. See NED.

forespeak, to predict; especially, to foretell evil about one. Chapman, tr. of Iliad, xvi. 792; xvii. 32; Witch of Edmonton, ii. 1 (Mother Sawyer).

forfaint, very faint, extremely languid. Sackville, Induction, § 15; Mirror for Mag., Buckingham, st. 73.

forfare, to perish, decay; ‘Thonge Castell . . . is now forfaryn’, Fabyan, Chron., Pt. V, c. 83 (side-note); ed. Ellis, 61. ME. forfaren (Gen. and Ex. 3018).

forgetive, inventive. 2 Hen. IV, iv. 3. 107. A word of uncertain formation, commonly taken to be a deriv. of the vb. ‘to forge’.

forgrown, grown out of use. Gascoigne, Prol., to Hermit’s Tale, ed. Hazlitt, i. 139.

forhaile, to distract. Spenser, Shep. Kal., Sept., 243. See NED. (s.v. For-, prefix¹ 5 b).

for-hent, seized beforehand. Better fore-hent, Spenser, F. Q. iii. 4. 49. From fore, before, and hent, caught, from OE. hentan, to seize.

forhewed, much hacked, severely cut. Sackville, Induction, st. 57.

forjust, to tire out in ‘justing’, beat in a tilting-match. Morte Arthur, leaf 162. 35; bk. viii, c. 33.