Word.ws English Dictionary

fordone

fordone is the simple past and past participle of fordo.

Adjective

fordone (comparative more fordone, superlative most fordone)

  1. Exhausted; overcome; worn out.
    • After ſo long a race as I haue run / Through Faery land, vvhich thoſe ſix books cõpile [compile] / giue leaue to reſt me being halfe fordonne, / and gather to my ſelfe nevv breath avvhile.1595, Edmunde Spenser [i.e., Edmund Spenser], “[Amoretti.] Sonnet LXXX”, in Amoretti and Epithalamion. […], London: […] [Peter Short] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, signature F, verso
  2. Utterly ruined; destroyed.

Meaning of fordo

Verb

fordo (third-person singular simple present fordoes, present participle fordoing, simple past fordid, past participle fordone)

  1. (obsolete) To kill, destroy.
    • […]This doth betoken / The coarse they follow did with desperate hand / Foredoe it’s own life.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
  2. (obsolete) To annul, abolish, cancel.
    • And that penaūce god hath ordeyned yow for that dede / that he that ye shalle most truste to of ony man alyue / he shalle leue yow ther ye shalle be slayne / Me forthynketh said kynge Pellinore that this shalle me betyde but god may fordoo wel desteny1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter XV, in Le Morte Darthur, book III
  3. (archaic) To do away with, undo; to ruin.
    • And yet there is at Alexandria a fair church, all white without paintures; and so be all the other churches that were of the Christian men, all white within, for the Paynims and the Saracens made them white for to fordo the images of saints that were painted on the walls.1900, John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (version in modern spelling)
  4. (archaic) To overcome with fatigue; to exhaust.
    • worn faces (...) / they wander, wander, / Or sit foredone and desolately ponder / Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head.1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

Forms of fordone

comparativemore fordone
superlativemost fordone

Origin of fordone

From Middle English fordon, from Old English fordōn, from Proto-Germanic *fradōnaz, past participle of *fradōną (“to fordo; do away with”), equivalent to for- + done. Cognate with Saterland Frisian ferdäin, Dutch verdaan, German vertan.

Questions about fordone

What does fordone mean?
Fordone means exhausted; overcome; worn out.
What is fordone the simple past and past participle of?
Fordone is the simple past and past participle of fordo.
What part of speech is fordone?
Fordone is an adjective.

Words near fordone in the dictionary

  1. Fordlandia
  2. fordless
  3. fordo
  4. fordoes
  5. fordoing
  6. fordone
  7. Fordonomics
  8. fordote
  9. Fordoun
  10. Fordow
  11. fordread

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fordone (page history and authors); fordo (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: “fordone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fordone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.