Word.ws English Dictionary

foredo

foredo is the alternative spelling of fordo.

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 foredo

third-person singular presentforedoes
present participleforedoing
pastforedid
past participleforedone

Questions about foredo

What is foredo the alternative spelling of?
Foredo is the alternative spelling of fordo.

Words near foredo in the dictionary

  1. foredid
  2. foredispose
  3. foredisposed
  4. foredisposes
  5. foredisposing
  6. foredo
  7. foredoes
  8. foredoing
  9. foredone
  10. foredoom
  11. foredoomed

Source and license

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