Dictionary

fordo en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /fɔː(ɹ)ˈduː/ (UK)

Etymology

From Middle English fordon, from Old English fordōn (“to undo, bring to naught, ruin, destroy, abolish, kill, corrupt, seduce, defile”), from Proto-West Germanic *fradōn (“to ruin, destroy”), equivalent to for- + do. Cognate with Saterland Frisian ferdwo (“to waste, consume”), West Frisian ferdwaan (“to waste”), Dutch verdoen (“to kill, waste”), German Low German verdoon (“to waste, consume”), German vertun (“to waste, spend, consume”).

Meanings

1. (obsolete) To kill, destroy.
   • […]This doth betoken / The coarse they follow did with desperate hand / Foredoe it’s own life. c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
2. (obsolete) To annul, abolish, cancel.
   • And that penaūce god hath ordeyned yow for that dede / that he that ye shalle most truste to of ony man alyue / he shalle leue yow ther ye shalle be slayne / Me forthynketh said kynge Pellinore that this shalle me betyde but god may fordoo wel desteny 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter XV, in Le Morte Darthur, book III:
3. (archaic) To do away with, undo; to ruin.
   • And yet there is at Alexandria a fair church, all white without paintures; and so be all the other churches that were of the Christian men, all white within, for the Paynims and the Saracens made them white for to fordo the images of saints that were painted on the walls. 1900, John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (version in modern spelling)
4. (archaic) To overcome with fatigue; to exhaust.
   • worn faces (...) / they wander, wander, / Or sit foredone and desolately ponder / Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head. 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night:
   • Foredone by the agitation of the past hour, he did not at once realise what it was that he saw. 1911, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson:

Forms