Word.ws English Dictionary

forthink

forthink verb: to cause distress or regret to; cause to regret or repent; to vex.

Verb

forthink (third-person singular simple present forthinks, present participle forthinking, simple past and past participle forthought)

  1. (impersonal, obsolete, transitive) To cause distress or regret to; cause to regret or repent; to vex.
    • with hys swerd lyghtly he smote of hir hede before kynge Arthur / allas for shame sayd Arthur why haue ye done so / ye haue shamed me and al my Courte / for this was a lady that I was be holden to / and hyther she came vnder my sauf conduyte / I shalle neuer foryeue you that trespas / Sir said...1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “iij”, in Le Morte Darthur, book II
  2. (obsolete, reflexive) To regret; repent.
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To regret.
    • So cam he to the chamber dore / and wold haue entryd / And anone a voyce said to hym / Flee launcelot / and entre not / for thou oughtest not to doo hit / And yf thou entre / thou shalt forthynke hit / Thenne he withdrewe hym abak ryght heuy1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter XV, in Le Morte Darthur, book XVII
  4. (intransitive, obsolete) To repent, be sorry for.
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To change one's mind about; to renounce.
    • Then gan he thinke, perforce with sword and targe / Her forth to fetch, and Proteus to constraine; / But soone he gan such folly to forthinke againe.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Forms of forthink

third-person singular presentforthinks
present participleforthinking
past participleforthought
pastforthought

Origin of forthink

From Middle English forthinken, forthynken (“to displease, cause to regret”), corresponding to for- (“mis-”) + think (“to seem, appear”), from Old English þyncan (“to seem, appear”); see methinks. Cognate with Middle High German verdunken (“to displease”), Icelandic forþykkja (“to displease”). Compare also Old English forþencan (“to mistrust, despise, despair”), Dutch verdenken (“to suspect”), German verdenken (“to blame”).

Questions about forthink

What does forthink mean?
Forthink means to cause distress or regret to; cause to regret or repent; to vex.
What part of speech is forthink?
Forthink is a verb.
What is the past tense of forthink?
The past tense of forthink is forthought.

Words near forthink in the dictionary

  1. forthgo
  2. forthgoer
  3. forthgoers
  4. forthgoing
  5. forthgoings
  6. forthink
  7. forthinketh
  8. forthinking
  9. forthinks
  10. forthlead
  11. forthleading

Source and license

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