Word.ws English Dictionary

fordry

fordry verb: to dry up; become dry.

Verb

fordry (third-person singular simple present fordries, present participle fordrying, simple past and past participle fordried)

  1. (intransitive) To dry up; become dry.
  2. (transitive) To dry up; make dry.

Adjective

fordry (comparative fordrier, superlative fordriest)

  1. (obsolete) Very dry; withered.
    • Amid a tree fordry, as white as chalk,
      As Canacé was playing in her walk,
      There sat a falcon o'er her head full high,
      That with a piteous voice so gan to cry, […]1387-1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Squire's Tale.

Forms of fordry

Verb
third-person singular presentfordries
present participlefordrying
past participlefordried
pastfordried
Adjective
comparativefordrier
superlativefordriest

Origin of fordry

From Middle English fordrien, fordruien, fordruȝen, from Old English fordrūgian (“to become dry, wither”), equivalent to for- + dry.

From Middle English fordruye, equivalent to for- (“very, excessively”) + dry.

Questions about fordry

What does fordry mean?
Fordry means to dry up; become dry.
What part of speech is fordry?
Fordry can be a verb or an adjective.
What is the past tense of fordry?
The past tense of fordry is fordried.

Words near fordry in the dictionary

  1. fordries
  2. fordrive
  3. fordriven
  4. fordriving
  5. fordrove
  6. fordry
  7. fordrying
  8. fords
  9. Fords Bridge
  10. Fordson
  11. Fordsons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fordry (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: “fordry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fordry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.