Word.ws English Dictionary

forbye

forbye is the alternative form of forby.

Meaning of forby

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.

See all 10 meanings of forby

Questions about forbye

What is forbye the alternative form of?
Forbye is the alternative form of forby.

Words near forbye in the dictionary

  1. forbuyer
  2. forbuyers
  3. forbuying
  4. forbuys
  5. forby
  6. forbye
  7. forbyland
  8. forbylands
  9. Forbys
  10. forc'd
  11. forc't

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forbye (page history and authors); forby (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.

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