(Originally Sc.) Forms: 6 foirbear, 6–7 for(e)beer, (6 forebeerar), 5– forbear, 6– forebear. [f. FOR- pref.2 or FORE- pref. + BEER sb.2, lit. one who is or exists before.] An ancestor, forefather, progenitor (usually more remote than a grandfather).

1

c. 1470.  Henry the Minstrel, Wallace, I. 21.

        His forbearis quha likis till wndrestand,
Of hale lynage, and trew lyne of Scotland.

2

1578–1600.  Scot. Poems 16th C., II. 159–60.

        For in this seiknes I was borne,
And my forebeerars me beforne
Our seiknes on thy back thou bure,
To saue me, Lord, thy creature.

3

1623.  Lisle, Ælfric on O. & N. Test., Pref. ¶ 17. Looke back a little to this outworne dialect of our forebeers.

4

1782.  Burns, Death Malie, 39.

        So may they [sheep], like their great forbears,
For monie a year come thro’ the sheers.

5

1816.  Scott, Antiq., xl. This Roland Cheyne, for as poor and auld as I sit in the chimney-neuk, was my forbear.

6

1883.  D. C. Murray, Hearts, I. iii. 53. A gray old farmhouse, which was tenanted by a yeoman whose forbears had once owned the land about it.

7