Word.ws English Dictionary

forward compatible

forward compatible adjective: capable of interoperating with anticipated future systems.

Adjective

forward compatible (comparative more forward compatible, superlative most forward compatible)

  1. Capable of interoperating with anticipated future systems.
    • In order to be forward compatible, we keep a configurable list of valid keywords that we don't understand.

Forms of forward compatible

comparativemore forward compatible
superlativemost forward compatible
alternative formforwards compatible

Origin of forward compatible

Back-formation from forward compatibility.

Questions about forward compatible

What does forward compatible mean?
Forward compatible means capable of interoperating with anticipated future systems.
What part of speech is forward compatible?
Forward compatible is an adjective.

Words near forward compatible in the dictionary

  1. forward
  2. forward and backward
  3. forward assist
  4. forward bias
  5. forward compatibility
  6. forward compatible
  7. forward contract
  8. forward contracts
  9. forward declaration
  10. forward declarations
  11. forward dive

Source and license

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