forbear
Americanverb (used with object)
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forbears,
present (3rd person singular)
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forbore,
past
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forborne,
past participle
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forbearing
present participle
verb (used without object)
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forbears,
present (3rd person singular)
-
forbore,
past
-
forborne,
past participle
-
forbearing
present participle
-
to refrain; hold back.
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to be patient or self-controlled when subject to annoyance or provocation.
verb
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to cease or refrain (from doing something)
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archaic to tolerate or endure (misbehaviour, mistakes, etc)
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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forbearernoun
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nonforbearingadjective
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unforbearingadjective
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forbearinglyadverb
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nonforbearinglyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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forbearsimple
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forbearssimple
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have forborneperfect
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has forborneperfect
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am forbearingprogressive
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are forbearingprogressive
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is forbearingprogressive
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have been forbearingperfect progressive
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has been forbearingperfect progressive
Past
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forboresimple
-
had forborneperfect
-
was forbearingprogressive
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were forbearingprogressive
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had been forbearingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of forbear
First recorded before 900; Middle English forberen, Old English forberan “to refrain from, abstain; spare, excuse”; see origin at for-, bear 1
Explanation
When you forbear, you hold yourself back from doing something. If you're mad at your best friend, you might forbear to return her text messages for a while. If you forbear to giggle during your teacher's stern lecture, that's a good thing. You keep yourself from laughing out loud, even though that's instinctively what you want to do. The Old English root, forberan, means "control one's feelings, or tolerate." A less common way to use forbear is as a noun meaning "ancestor." So if you're refraining from reading about your ancestors, you can say you forbear to learn about your forbears.
Vocabulary lists containing forbear
Romeo and Juliet
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Grade 11, List 6
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The Hobbit
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Three decades ago, Likud, then a more traditional conservative party, shunned Mr. Ben-Gvir’s ideological forbear, Meir Kahane, for being too extreme.
From New York Times ● Oct. 24, 2022
"Frankly I do not myself feel at all like my great Tudor forbear."
From Reuters ● Feb. 3, 2022
Respondent argues that there is no immediate threat of future harm, because he has and will continue to exercise personal discipline to forbear from discussing these matters in public anymore.
From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2021
Mothers will not forbear to remind their children that they do not love them.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 5, 2018
The slaves, when they heard this, clustered close about him and embraced him; and he embraced them, and none could forbear weeping.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Following the trail of these minuscule treasures back in time, Mr. de Waal traced the history of his forbears among the Ephrussis, a Jewish banking family that grew prosperous in the 19th century.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 30, 2026
In a flashback, Lucia explains to Amelia that her forbears were Spanish and Apache, making the young woman’s English heritage a challenge to the status quo.
From Salon ● Apr. 16, 2025
In the way of his forbears, Gibson uses beads sourced from all over the world, including vintage beads from Japan and China, and glass beads from the Venetian island of Murano.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 18, 2024
But for all its forbears, this spooky-ooky 1989-set romance has a thoroughly modern sensibility, and it’s about to be the new obsession of quirky teens everywhere.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 7, 2024
Like their forbears, they do their best to survive, even thrive—against all odds.
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
Yet Lawyer Littlepage, to whom Milly was secretary, forbore to dismiss her despite her flippancy, her sullen desire to live her own life regardless of the opinions of others.
From Time Magazine Archive
These statesmen forbore going to court in part because they doubted the courts would, or should, be open to them.
From Time Magazine Archive
Suppose the banker put away the check as a weapon, and forbore arresting the clerk because obviously he was clever and had inside information on the market operations of high officials.
From Time Magazine Archive
He forbore to attack Lyndon Johnson on Viet Nam in 1968, he said, because he feared that he might jeopardize the fledgling negotiations in Paris.
From Time Magazine Archive
Out of delicacy, he forbore to tell her that Boots was no longer exactly male.
From "Tiger, Tiger" by Lynne Reid Banks
New York's Mayor Lindsay has wisely forborne forcing the issue with protesters harmlessly occupying a state building site in Harlem.
From Time Magazine Archive
He had forborne, hoping others would forbear, and they had not.
From Time Magazine Archive
At Berlin General von Cramon scored the French for bombarding Damascus; told how Feldmarschall von der Goltz had forborne to shell Antwerp Cathedral during the obliterating German bombardments of Rheims, Verdun, Amiens, etc.
From Time Magazine Archive
These scruples you will remember, I respected, although I considered them misplaced; but I would not force the tenderest conscience, and I have forborne in my letters, to urge you upon this point.
From A Search For A Secret (Vol 3 of 3) A Novel by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
I that live in the shelter of these woods by sufferance merely—an unmolested outlaw, to speak soberly, whom these fanatics of liberty have forborne for the sake of past acquaintance and present peaceful habits?
From Horse-Shoe Robinson A Tale of the Tory Ascendency by John Pendleton Kennedy
“You know, their story is quite similar to how women in England weren’t allowed to play football for years,” observed Higgins, netting a doubtful reaction from the museum’s forbearing docent.
From Salon ● Aug. 7, 2026
She had a contract to write a “cheerful dinner-party cookbook” but instead handed her forbearing editors “The Year of Miracles,” a luminous memoir about grieving, renewal and the twin consolations of friendship and cooking.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 3, 2022
Yet I thought that I saw a sadness in his eyes, which—despite all his forbearing elegance—told a story, and I knew, if not how, that his life was somehow tied to the Task.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 3, 2019
The saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is a founder of the association, and one of its most graceful, forbearing composers.
From New York Times ● Jun. 30, 2017
The gray-haired man turned his head again toward the girl, perhaps to show her how forbearing, even stoic, his countenance was.
From "Nine Stories" by J. D. Salinger
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
