forby
/fəˈbʌɪ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.16 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "He's a forbye man."
- "To see the world and folk that went forby, […]"
- "He was forby kind."
- "Those were the two sonnes of Acrates old / Who meeting earst with Archimago slie, / Foreby that idle strond, of him were told, / That he, wich earst them combatted, was Guyon bold."
- "There was other six forby me."
- "[T]hey ca' it fasting when they hae the best o' fish frae Hartlepool and Sunderland by land carriage, forbye trouts, gilses, salmon, and a' the lave o't, and so they make their very fasting a kind of luxury and abomination; […]"
Etymology
From Middle English forby, forbi, of Middle Low German or North Germanic origin, equivalent to fore- + by. Compare Saterland Frisian foarbie (“beyond, past”), West Frisian foarby (“over, beyond, past”), Dutch voorbij (“beyond, past”), Low German vörbi, vörbie (“over, up, gone, finished, past”), German vorbei (“over, gone, past”), Danish forbi, Swedish förbi. More at fore, by.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /fəˈbʌɪ/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more forby (comparative)
most forby (superlative)
foreby (alternative)
forbye (alternative)
Forbys (plural)