For forms see FATHER. [f. FORE- pref. + 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., 5463 (Cott.).
| [Iacob] went out of þis wreched werld, | |
| And til his forfaders fard. |
1377. Langl., P. Pl., B. V. 501. Feddest with þi fresche blode · owre forfadres in derknesse.
c. 1450. Chester Pl., xii. 163.
| Since our forefather ouercomen was | |
| by three thinges 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), i. 17. This was probably a great part of the Food of our Forefathers before the Floud.
1750. Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard, 13.
| Beneath those rugged Elms, that Yew-Tree’s Shade, | |
| Where heaves the Turf in many a mould’ring Heap, | |
| Each in his narrow Cell for ever laid, | |
| The rude Forefathers of the Hamlet sleep. |
1821. J. Q. Adams, in C. Davies, The Metric System, III. (1871), 120. The people took the standards as they came, and used the measures which they and their forefathers, time out of mind, had employed.
1848. Lowell, Lett. (1894), I. 147. It is Forefathers’ Day, you remember.
transf. and fig. 1593. Shaks., Rich. II., II. ii. 35.
| Conceit is still deriu’d | |
| From some fore-father greefe. |
1834. Ht. Martineau, Moral, I. 5–6. It is a great thing to possess improved breeds of animals in the place of their forefathers,—the lean wild cattle with which our forefathers were content.
Hence Forefatherly a., of or pertaining to one’s forefathers, ancestral.
1855. H. Clarke, Dict., Forefatherly, ancestral.
1873. David Masson, The Three Interests in Old English Literature, in Contemporary Review, XXI. Jan., 213. And one ignorant of German would sooner undertake to translate a page of German with the help of a dictionary than to perform the same feat, with similar help, on a page of such abstruse Englisc, forefatherly and foremotherly as we are assured it is.
1880. G. Meredith, Trag. Com., vi. I have learnt as much from light literature as from heavy—as much, that is, from the pictures of our human blood in motion as from the clever assortment of our forefatherly heaps of bones.
