Word.ws English Dictionary

forsook

/fɔɹˈsʊk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

England/fɔːˈsʊk/

forsook is the simple past of forsake.

Meaning of forsake

Verb

forsake (third-person singular simple present forsakes, present participle forsaking, simple past forsook, past participle forsaken)

  1. (transitive) To abandon, to give up, to leave (permanently), to renounce (someone or something).
    • Doeſt thou forſake the deuill and all his workes? / Aunſwere. I forſake them.1549 March 7, Thomas Cranmer [et al.], compilers, “Of the Administracion of Publyke Baptisme to be Used in the Churche”, in The Booke of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacramentes, […]...
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To decline or refuse (something offered).
    • The youthful Bull muſt wander in the Wood; / Behind the Mountain, or beyond the Flood: / [...] / With two fair Eyes his Miſtreſs burns his Breaſt; / He looks and languiſhes, and leaves his Reſt; / Forſakes his Food, and pining for the Laſs, / Is joyleſs of the Grove, and ſpurns the growing Graſs.1697, Virgil, “The Third Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 106, lines...
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To avoid or shun (someone or something).
    • This was that Pascall lambe [i.e., Jesus] whose loue for vs so stood, / That on the mount of Caluerie, for vs did shed his blood: / Where hanging on the Crosse, no shame he did forsake, / Till death giuen him by pearcing speare, an ende of life did make.1878, Thomas Tusser, “The Authors Beleefe”, in Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie. […], London: Published for the English Dialect Society by Trübner & Co., […], →OCLC; republished as W[illiam]...
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To cause disappointment to; to be insufficient for (someone or something).
    • Theſe birds, on the continent of America, continue to flutter the year round; as their food, which is the honey of flowers, never forſakes them in thoſe warm latitudes where they are found.1791, Oliver Goldsmith, “Of the Humming-bird, and Its Varieties”, in An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature. […], new edition, volume V, London: […] F[rancis] Wingrave, successor to Mr. [John]...

Words formed from forsook

Words that rhyme with forsook

38 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about forsook

What is forsook the simple past of?
Forsook is the simple past of forsake.
How do you pronounce forsook?
Forsook is pronounced /fɔɹˈsʊk/ (US).

Words near forsook in the dictionary

  1. Forsmo
  2. forsomuch
  3. forsomuch as
  4. Forson
  5. Forsons
  6. forsook
  7. forsookest
  8. forsooth
  9. forsought
  10. forspake
  11. forspan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forsook (page history and authors); forsake (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-forsook.ogg.

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