Word.ws English Dictionary

forlet

forlet verb: to abandon; give up; leave; leave behind; forsake; desert; neglect.

Verb

forlet (third-person singular simple present forlets, present participle forletting, simple past and past participle forlet)

  1. (UK, archaic, dialectal, transitive) To abandon; give up; leave; leave behind; forsake; desert; neglect.
    • to forlet your sins
    • I soothly quoth, then say, to you, for that each such, he that forlets wife his, be-out unclean lust doing forth-lying thing, doeth (works) he doeth the same to sin, …1807, The Gothic Gospel of saint Matthew
  2. (Scotland, UK, dialectal, transitive) To forget.

Examples of forlet in a sentence

  • But, by my soul, I dare well swear His wretched life he shall forlet [...]1834, Samuel Astley Dunham, A History of Europe During the Middle Ages - Volume 4:
  • … whether his mind and his soul were deadly and perishing, or it were aye living and eternal; and again, about his good, what it was, and what good was best for him to do, and what evil to forlet.1920, Alfred (King of England), Pope Gregory I, Paulus Orosius, King Alfred's books - Page 11

Forms of forlet

third-person singular presentforlets
present participleforletting
past participleforlet
pastforlet
alternative formforelet
alternative formforleet
alternative formforleit
alternative formforlete
alternative formforeleit

Origin of forlet

From Middle English forleten (“forsake, reject, renounce, omit, lose, forgive”), from Old English forlǣtan (“to leave”), from Proto-Germanic *fralētaną (“to leave, dismiss”), equivalent to for- + let. Cognate with Scots forleet (“to forsake, abandon”), Saterland Frisian ferläite (“to forlet, abandon”), West Frisian forlitte (“to forlet”), Dutch verlaten (“to desert, abandon”), German verlassen (“to leave”), Swedish förlåta (“to excuse, forgive, remit”).

Questions about forlet

What does forlet mean?
Forlet means to abandon; give up; leave; leave behind; forsake; desert; neglect.
How do you use forlet in a sentence?
But, by my soul, I dare well swear His wretched life he shall forlet [...]
What part of speech is forlet?
Forlet is a verb.
What is the past tense of forlet?
The past tense of forlet is forlet.

Words near forlet in the dictionary

  1. forlese
  2. forleses
  3. forlesing
  4. forlesings
  5. forlest
  6. forlet
  7. forlets
  8. forletting
  9. Forli
  10. forlie
  11. forlighten

Source and license

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