Word.ws English Dictionary

forby

UK/fəˈbʌɪ/

forby adjective: uncommon; out of the ordinary; extraordinary; superior.

Adjective

forby (comparative more forby, superlative most forby)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) Uncommon; out of the ordinary; extraordinary; superior.
    • He's a forbye man.

Adverb

forby (comparative more forby, superlative most forby)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) Past; by; beyond.
    • To see the world and folk that went forby, […]1899, Richard Garnett, Alois Leonhard Brandl, The universal anthology
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) Uncommonly; exceptionally.
    • He was forby kind.

Preposition

forby

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) Beyond; past; more than; greater than; over and above; moreover.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) Past; gone by; over.
  3. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) Near; beside; by, close to.
    • Those were the two sonnes of Acrates old / Who meeting earst with Archimago slie, / Foreby that idle strond, of him were told, / That he, wich earst them combatted, was Guyon bold.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    next to
  4. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) On one side; out of the way.
  5. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) Besides; in addition to; as well as; not to mention.
    • There was other six forby me.
    • [T]hey ca' it fasting when they hae the best o' fish frae Hartlepool and Sunderland by land carriage, forbye trouts, gilses, salmon, and a' the lave o't, and so they make their very fasting a kind of luxury and abomination; […]1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter [VI], in Rob Roy. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst...
    Synonyms:
    beyond
  6. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal) With the exception of; not taking into account.
    Synonyms:
    barring

Proper noun capitalized: Forby

Forby (plural Forbys)

  1. A surname.

forby meaning in Tamil

forby in Tamil

கூடுதலாக

Synonyms of forby

All synonyms of forby

Forms of forby

Adjective
comparativemore forby
superlativemost forby
alternative formforeby
alternative formforbye
Adverb
comparativemore forby
superlativemost forby
Proper noun
pluralForbys

Origin of forby

From Middle English forby, forbi, of Middle Low German or North Germanic origin, equivalent to fore- + by. Compare Saterland Frisian foarbie (“beyond, past”), West Frisian foarby (“over, beyond, past”), Dutch voorbij (“beyond, past”), Low German vörbi, vörbie (“over, up, gone, finished, past”), German vorbei (“over, gone, past”), Danish forbi, Swedish förbi. More at fore, by.

Words formed from forby

Questions about forby

What does forby mean?
Forby means uncommon; out of the ordinary; extraordinary; superior.
What is forby in Tamil?
Forby in Tamil is கூடுதலாக. See Forby meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is forby?
Forby can be an adjective, an adverb, a preposition or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce forby?
Forby is pronounced /fəˈbʌɪ/ (UK).

Words near forby in the dictionary

  1. forbuy
  2. forbuyer
  3. forbuyers
  4. forbuying
  5. forbuys
  6. forby
  7. forbye
  8. forbyland
  9. forbylands
  10. Forbys
  11. forc'd

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forby (page history and authors); Forby (page history and authors); Forby (Tamil 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:

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