Word.ws English Dictionary

far be it

far be it phrase: a disclaimer stating that something should not come to pass, or that a person would never do or think a certain thing.

Phrase

far be it

  1. (idiomatic) A disclaimer stating that something should not come to pass, or that a person would never do or think a certain thing.
    • Samuel 20:20,
      And Joab answered and said, Far be it, far be it from me, that I should swallow up or destroy.
    • October 1761, Oliver Cromwell, letter to Mr. Storie
      Far be it that soe much guilt should sticke to your hands, who live in a citye so renowned for the clere shininge light of the Gospell.

Origin of far be it

Calque of Latin absit ("may it be away"), found in the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible as part of the phrase absit hoc a me ("may this [thing] be away from me") at 1 Samuel 2:30, 1 Samuel 22:15 and 2 Samuel 20:20. Wyclif translated the phrase "Fer be this fro me"; the King James Version at 2 Samuel 20:20 has "Far be it from me".

Questions about far be it

What does far be it mean?
Far be it means a disclaimer stating that something should not come to pass, or that a person would never do or think a certain thing.
What part of speech is far be it?
Far be it is a phrase.

Words near far be it in the dictionary

  1. faquirs
  2. far
  3. far and away
  4. far and wide
  5. far away
  6. far be it
  7. far breton
  8. far bretons
  9. Far Cotton
  10. far cries
  11. far cry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: far be it (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-far be it.ogg.

Cite this entry: “far be it.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/far_be_it. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.