Late 15th century, from fore- + beer.

• (RP) IPA: /ˈfɔːˌbɛə/
• (America) IPA: /ˈfɔɹˌbɛɚ/

forebear (plural forebears)

1. An ancestor.

   Hypernyms: predecessor

   • 1885, Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 566:

     One day, among the days, he bethought him of this and fell lamenting for that the most part of his existence was past and he had not been vouchsafed a son, to inherit the kingdom after him, even as he had inherited it from his fathers and forebears; by reason whereof there betided him sore cark and care and chagrin exceeding.

   • [1906] 2004, Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, Ethel Wedgwood tr.

     Sirs, I am quite sure that the King of England's forbears rightly and justly lost the conquered lands that I hold […]

   • [1936] 2004, Raymond William Firth, We the Tikopia

     One does not take one’s family name therefrom, and again the position of the mother in that group is determined through her father and his male forbears in turn; this too is a patrilineal group.

   • 1997, H. L. Hix, Understanding W. S. Merwin‎:

     Beginning with the bald declaration “I think I was cold in the womb,” the speaker in “The Forbears” then decides that his brother (who died soon after birth) must also have been cold in the womb, like his grandfather John and the forbears who antedated John.

• afterbear

• French: ancêtre
• German: Vorfahr, Ahn, Vorfahre
• Italian: antenato
• Portuguese: antepassado
• Russian: предше́ственник
• Spanish: ancestro, antepasado

forebear (forebears, present participle forebearing; simple past forebore, past participle foreborne)

1. Obsolete spelling of forbear