Word.ws English Dictionary

forestretch

forestretch verb: to stretch out, forth, or forward.

Verb

forestretch (third-person singular simple present forestretches, present participle forestretching, simple past and past participle forestretched)

  1. (rare, transitive) To stretch out, forth, or forward.
    • Bend in the forest then the plastic elm, By pressure moulded to the plough-beam's curve: To this be fitted at its nether point An eight foot pole, forestretching; back to back1825, Publius Vergilius Maro, A translation of the first book of the Georgics of Virgil
    • In short, in their persuasive efforts to please, to give everybody "a sweet taste of liberty," the Commission had pleased no one. Thus was the Commission, caught in vast inscrutables, uneasily observing a hydra-headed giant, forestretched, abysmally yawning, in disturbed slumber.1961, Peter Decker, Benedict Arnold: Son of the Havens - Page 145

Noun

forestretch (plural not attested)

  1. (no plural, rare) That which stretches out, forth, or forward.
    • Now, we had not been looking about us above five minutes when, happening to glance aft past the helmsman, I saw the ocean not above half a mile distant white as milk: the forestretch of it was about two miles long; how wide it went back I could not say, [...]1895, William Clark Russell, A Three-stranded Yarn: The Wreck of the Lady Emma - Page 170
    • Into it, he slowed and stiffened still more, as though he waded through a holding action, biding till the curve and then the forestretch where he could be faster.1969, Quarterly Review of Literature, volumes 16-17, page 423

Forms of forestretch

third-person singular presentforestretches
present participleforestretching
past participleforestretched
pastforestretched

Origin of forestretch

From fore- + stretch. Cognate with German vorstrecken.

Questions about forestretch

What does forestretch mean?
Forestretch means to stretch out, forth, or forward.
What part of speech is forestretch?
Forestretch can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of forestretch?
The past tense of forestretch is forestretched.

Words near forestretch in the dictionary

  1. forestrands
  2. forestream
  3. forestreams
  4. forestress
  5. forestresses
  6. forestretch
  7. forestries
  8. forestripping
  9. forestroke
  10. forestrokes
  11. forestry

Source and license

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