Word.ws English Dictionary

forspan

forspan verb: to entice; seduce.

Verb

forspan (third-person singular simple present forspans, present participle forspanning, simple past and past participle forspanned)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To entice; seduce.

Noun

forspan (uncountable)

  1. Foresight; the ability to see, predict, or perceive future events.
    • In a remote age and country we find Njal, the hero of the Njal's saga, credited with forspan, or the gift of beholding such shadowy apparitions of future events — a power carefully distinguished from ordinary clear-sighted wisdom.1902, Day Otis Kellogg, Thomas Spencer Baynes, William Robertson Smith, The Encyclopaedia Britannica

Forms of forspan

third-person singular presentforspans
present participleforspanning
past participleforspanned
pastforspanned

Origin of forspan

From Middle English forspannen, forspanen, from Old English forspanan (“to mislead, lead astray, seduce, entice”), from Proto-Germanic *farspananą, *fraspananą (“to allure”), equivalent to for- + span. Cognate with Middle High German verspanen (“to tempt, entice”).

From fore- + span.

Questions about forspan

What does forspan mean?
Forspan means to entice; seduce.
What part of speech is forspan?
Forspan can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of forspan?
The past tense of forspan is forspanned.

Words near forspan in the dictionary

  1. forsook
  2. forsookest
  3. forsooth
  4. forsought
  5. forspake
  6. forspan
  7. forspanning
  8. forspare
  9. forspeak
  10. forspeaking
  11. forspeaks

Source and license

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