Word.ws English Dictionary

tofore

/təˈfɔː(ɹ)/

tofore preposition: before.

Preposition

tofore

  1. (obsolete) Before.

Adverb

tofore (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) Before, previously.
    • Farewell, Lavinia, my noble sister ; O would thou wert as thou tofore hast been!1592, William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

Conjunction

tofore

  1. (obsolete) Before.

Forms of tofore

alternative formtoforne

Origin of tofore

From Middle English tofore, toforn, from Old English tōforan (“in front of”), from tō (“to”) + foran (“front, fore-part”, n.), dative case of fora (“front”). Compare Dutch tevoren (“previously”), German zuvor (“before, previously”). More at to, fore.

Words formed from tofore

Questions about tofore

What does tofore mean?
Tofore means before.
What part of speech is tofore?
Tofore can be a preposition, an adverb or a conjunction.
How do you pronounce tofore?
Tofore is pronounced /təˈfɔː(ɹ)/.

Words near tofore in the dictionary

  1. tofish
  2. tofisopam
  3. Tofitian
  4. Tofitians
  5. tofogliflozin
  6. tofore
  7. toforehand
  8. toforetime
  9. TofR
  10. tofrush
  11. TOFs

Source and license

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