Word.ws English Dictionary

foe

UK/fəʊ//foʊ/

foe adjective: hostile.

Adjective

foe

  1. (obsolete) Hostile.
    • he, I say, could passe into Affrike onely with two simple ships or small barkes, to commit himselfe in a strange and foe countrie, to engage his person, under the power of a barbarous King […]., vol.1, ch.23

Noun (1)

foe (plural foes)

  1. An enemy.
    • And a mans foes ſhalbe they of his owne houſhold.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 10:36
    • Even without hovering drones, a lurking assassin, a thumping score and a denouement, the real-life story of Edward Snowden, a rogue spy on the run, could be straight out of the cinema. But, as with Hollywood, the subplots and exotic locations may distract from the real message: America’s discomfort...2013 June 29, “Travels and travails”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 55

Noun (2)

foe (plural foes)

  1. A unit of energy equal to 10⁴⁴ joules.
    Synonyms:
    bethe

Proper noun (1) capitalized: FOE

FOE

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Friends of the Earth.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Fraternal Order of Eagles.

Noun (3) capitalized: FOE

FOE (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of freedom of expression.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of forces of evil.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: FoE

FoE

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Friends of the Earth.

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Foe

Foe

  1. A surname from German.

Examples of foe in a sentence

  • I want you as a friend, not a foe.
  • Our foes must all be slain.
  • There was evil laughter coming from the villain's lair as he was contemplating how he was going to defeat his heroic foe.

All 40 example sentences with foe

Synonyms of foe

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of foe

Forms of foe

Noun
pluralfoes
Proper noun
alternative formFoE
alternative formFOE

Plural of foe: foes

Origin of foe

From Middle English fo (“foe; hostile”), from earlier yfoh, yvo, ifa (“foe”), from Old English ġefāh (“enemy”), from fāh (“hostile”), from Proto-West Germanic *faih, from Proto-Germanic *faihaz (compare Old Frisian fāch (“punishable”), Middle High German gevēch (“feuder”)), from Proto-Indo-European *peyk/ḱ- (“to hate, be hostile”) (compare Middle Irish óech (“enemy, fiend”), Lithuanian pi̇̀ktas (“evil”)).

Acronym of [ten to the power of] fifty-one ergs, due to equalling 10⁵¹ ergs; coined by Gerald Brown of Stony Brook University in his work with Hans Bethe.

Words formed from foe

Words that rhyme with foe

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about foe

What does foe mean?
Foe means hostile.
What part of speech is foe?
Foe can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce foe?
Foe is pronounced /fəʊ/ (UK).

Words near foe in the dictionary

  1. Fodorian
  2. fodrin
  3. fodrins
  4. fods
  5. fody
  6. foe
  7. foeder
  8. foederati
  9. foederatus
  10. foeders
  11. foedom

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foe (page history and authors); FOE (page history and authors); FoE (page history and authors); Foe (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-us-foe.ogg.

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