foray

/ˈfɒɹ.eɪ/US/ˈfɔɹ.eɪ/

foray noun: a sudden or irregular incursion in border warfare; hence, any irregular incursion for war or spoils; a raid.

Noun

foray (plural forays)

A sudden or irregular incursion in border warfare; hence, any irregular incursion for war or spoils; a raid.
A brief excursion or attempt, especially outside one's accustomed sphere.
- Bastian Schweinsteiger and Muller were among many who should have added the third, and City were limited to rare forays with the excellent Boateng pinching the ball off Aguero and Aleksandar Kolarov shooting wide in stoppage time.2011 September 27, Alistair Magowan, “Bayern Munich 2 - 0 Man City”, in BBC Sport

Verb

foray (third-person singular simple present forays, present participle foraying, simple past and past participle forayed)

To participate in a foray.
- The people of Granada resumed all at once their ancient activity, foraying into the Christian territories, surprising Alhendin and some other places of less importance, and stirring up the spirit of revolt in Guadix and other conquered cities.1837, William Hickling Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic
To do or attempt something outside one's typical area of expertise.
- "It seems as though I have lived this life always. The world of books and bookish folk is very vague, more like a dream memory than an actuality. I surely have hunted and forayed and fought all the days of my life. And you, too, seem a part of it. You are -- " I was on the verge of saying, "my...1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC
- Over the summer, I'd been following the news cycle, foraying into online journalism, and I wrote a couple of pieces on male victims of sexual violence, who are often left to the margins or forgotten altogether in feminist accounts of rape culture.2018, Abigail Rine Favale, Into the Deep
(archaic, transitive) To scour an area for goods as part of a foray.
- He bad to open wyde his brazen gate,
  Which long time had bene shut, and out of hond
  Proclaymed joy and peace through all his state;
  For dead now was their foe which them forrayed late.1590, Edward Spenser, The Faerie Queene
- Bruce forayed Cumberland, and threatened Berwick, so that the poor Countess of Buchan was removed from thence to a more secure place of captivity.1857, Charlotte Mary Yonge, Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

foray meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

foray in Malayalam

attack, raid, assault: കടന്നാക്രമണം, പെട്ടെന്നുള്ള ആക്രമണം, പടയോട്ടം, പടയേറ്റം, അവിചരിതമായ ആക്രമണം, പാഞ്ഞടിക്കൽ

foray in Kannada

ಆಕ್ರಮಣ, ದಾಳಿ, ಕೊಳ್ಳೆ, ಲೂಟಿ, ಸೂರೆ, ಕೊಳ್ಳೆಹೊಡೆ

Examples of foray in a sentence

His initial foray into print media was as the author of a weekly column in his elementary-school newspaper.
Feeling peckish, I made a foray kitchenward.
It made occasional forays into nounhood, in fixed expressions like without fail and no-fail.

All 17 example sentences with foray

Forms of foray

Noun
plural	forays
alternative form (obsolete)	forrey
Verb
third-person singular present	forays
present participle	foraying
past participle	forayed
past	forayed

Plural of foray: forays

Origin of foray

From Middle English forrayen (“to pillage”), a back-formation of forrayour, forreour, forrier (“raider, pillager”), from Old French forrier, fourrier, a derivative of fuerre (“provender, fodder, straw”), from Frankish *fōdar (“fodder, sheath”), from Proto-Germanic *fōdrą (“fodder, feed, sheath”), from Proto-Indo-European *patrom (“fodder”), *pat- (“to feed”), *pāy- (“to guard, graze, feed”). Cognate with Old High German fuotar (German Futter (“fodder, feed”)), Old English fōdor, fōþer (“food, fodder, covering, case, basket”), Dutch voeder (“forage, food, feed”), Danish foder (“fodder, feed”), Icelandic fóður (“fodder, sheath”). More at fodder, food, forage.

Words formed from foray

forayer

Words that rhyme with foray

moray

Questions about foray

What does foray mean?: Foray means a sudden or irregular incursion in border warfare; hence, any irregular incursion for war or spoils; a raid.
What is foray in Tamil?: Foray in Tamil is கொள்ளை, திடீர்த் தாக்குதல். See Foray meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is foray?: Foray can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce foray?: Foray is pronounced /ˈfɒɹ.eɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of foray?: The plural of foray is forays.

Words near foray in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: foray (page history and authors); foray (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); foray (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); foray (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); foray (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-foray.wav.

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