Word.ws English Dictionary

forfeiting

forfeiting is the present participle and gerund of forfeit.

Meaning of forfeit

Verb

forfeit (third-person singular simple present forfeits, present participle forfeiting, simple past and past participle forfeited or (rare) forfeit)

  1. To suffer the loss of something by wrongdoing or non-compliance
    • He forfeited his last chance of an early release from jail by repeatedly attacking another inmate.
  2. To lose a contest, game, match, or other form of competition by voluntary withdrawal, by failing to attend or participate, or by violation of the rules
    • Because only nine players were present, the football team was forced to forfeit the game.
  3. To be guilty of a misdeed; to be criminal; to transgress.
  4. To fail to keep an obligation.
    • I will have the heart of him if he forfeit.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  5. Of government officials: to legally remove property from its previous owners.
    • After the raid on USPV, Plaintiffs filed claims with the FBI seeking return of their seized property. The government did not return the property in response to these claims; instead, it indicated that it was seeking to forfeit the property.2024 January 23, Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr., Snitko v. United States, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2024

See all 10 meanings of forfeit

Noun

forfeiting (plural forfeitings)

  1. The act by which something is forfeited or surrendered; a giving up.
    • The finings and forfeitings of persons of substance and estates were innumerable, some of the last may come to be noticed in this chapter, and in the progress of this work.1832, Robert Wodrow, The History of the Suffering of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution

Forms of forfeiting

pluralforfeitings

Questions about forfeiting

What does forfeiting mean?
Forfeiting means the act by which something is forfeited or surrendered; a giving up.
What is forfeiting the present participle and gerund of?
Forfeiting is the present participle and gerund of forfeit.
What part of speech is forfeiting?
Forfeiting is a noun.
What is the plural of forfeiting?
The plural of forfeiting is forfeitings.

Words near forfeiting in the dictionary

  1. forfeited
  2. forfeiter
  3. forfeiters
  4. forfeitest
  5. forfeiteth
  6. forfeiting
  7. forfeitings
  8. forfeits
  9. forfeiture
  10. forfeiture fund
  11. forfeiture funds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forfeiting (page history and authors); forfeit (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.

Last updated:

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