forefather
(ˈfɔəfɑːðə(r))
For forms see father.
[f. fore- prefix + father. ON. had forfaðir. Cf. form-, forn-, forth-father.]
An ancestor, a progenitor. Chiefly pl. forefathers' day (U.S.): the anniversary of the day on which the first settlers landed at Plymouth, Mass.
| a 1300 Cursor M. 5464 (Cott.) Jacob..went out of þis wreched werld, And til his forfaders fard. 1377 Langl. P. Pl. B. v. 501 Feddest with thi fresche blode owre forfadres in derknesse. c 1450 Chester Pl. xii. 163 Our forfather ouer⁓comen was..to doe evill. 1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 14 b, Theyr forefathers were baptysed in the reed see. a 1682 Sir T. Browne Tracts (1684) 17 Our Forefathers before the Floud. 1750 Gray Elegy 16 The rude Fore⁓fathers of the Hamlet. 1821 J. Q. Adams in C. Davies Metr. Syst. iii. (1871) 120 Measures which they and their fore-fathers, time out of mind had employed. 1848 Lowell Lett. (1894) I. 147 It is Fore-fathers' Day, you remember. |
| transf. and fig. 1593 Shakes. Rich. II, ii. ii. 35 Conceit is still deriu'd From some fore-father greefe. 1834 H. Martineau Moral i. 6 It is a great thing to possess improved breeds of animals in the place of their forefathers. |
Hence
ˈforeˌfatherly a., of or pertaining to one's forefathers, ancestral.
| 1855 in Clarke Dict. 1873 Contemp. Rev. XXI. 213 Abstruse Englisc, forefatherly and foremotherly as we are assured it is. 1880 G. Meredith Trag. Com. vi, The clever assortment of our forefatherly heaps of bones. |