foreswear

1. 1.

   do without or cease to hold or adhere to

   “We are dispensing with formalities”

   “relinquish the old ideas”

   Synonymswaiverelinquishforgoforegodispense with

   Narrowerkick
2. 2.

   turn away from; give up

   “I am foreswearing women forever”

   Synonymsrenouncequitrelinquish

   Broaderabandon

   Narrowerdisclaim

Other forms of foreswear

past tense

foresweared·

present participle

foreswearing·

third person

foreswears·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about foreswear

What does foreswear mean?

foreswear means "do without or cease to hold or adhere to". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in foreswear?

foreswear has 4 syllables: fo-re-swe-ar. The stress falls on "re".

What is another word for foreswear?

Close synonyms include waive, relinquish, forgo, forego, dispense with. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is foreswear a common word?

foreswear is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.