Word.ws English Dictionary

forsteal

forsteal verb: to steal away, rob, deprive. Also the obsolete form of forestall.

Verb

forsteal (third-person singular simple present forsteals, present participle forstealing, simple past forstole, past participle forstolen)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To steal away, rob, deprive.
    • Be ye not willing to hoard to you gold hoards on earth, where rust and moth fortake it, and where thieves delve it and forsteal, […]1861, Thomas Oswald Cockayne, Spoon and sparrow

Also used as

forsteal is also the obsolete form of forestall.

Forms of forsteal

Verb
third-person singular presentforsteals
present participleforstealing
pastforstole
past participleforstolen
Noun
pluralforsteals

Origin of forsteal

From Middle English forstelen, from Old English forstelan (“to steal away, steal, rob, deprive”), from Proto-Germanic *farstelaną, *frastelaną (“to steal, steal away”), equivalent to for- + steal. Cognate with Middle Low German vorstelen (“to steal away”), Middle High German ferstelan (“to steal away”).

Variant of forestall.

Questions about forsteal

What does forsteal mean?
Forsteal means to steal away, rob, deprive.
What part of speech is forsteal?
Forsteal is a verb.
What is the past tense of forsteal?
The past tense of forsteal is forstole.

Words near forsteal in the dictionary

  1. Forstaters
  2. forstaw
  3. forstawed
  4. forstawing
  5. forstaws
  6. forsteal
  7. forstealing
  8. forsteals
  9. Forster
  10. Forster's tern
  11. Forster's terns

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forsteal (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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