fordo

English

Alternative forms

• foredo

Etymology

From Middle English fordon, from Old English fordōn (“to undo, bring to naught, ruin, destroy, abolish, kill, corrupt, seduce, defile”), from Proto-West Germanic *fradōn (“to ruin, destroy”), equivalent to for- +‎ do. Cognate with Saterland Frisian ferdwo (“to waste, consume”), West Frisian ferdwaan (“to waste”), Dutch verdoen (“to kill, waste”), German Low German verdoon (“to waste, consume”), German vertun (“to waste, spend, consume”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɔː(ɹ)ˈduː/

Verb

fordo (third-person singular simple present fordoes, present participle fordoing, simple past fordid, past participle fordone)

1. (obsolete) To kill, destroy.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

     […] This doth betoken / The corpse they follow did with desperate hand / Fordo it own life.

2. (obsolete) To annul, abolish, cancel.
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter XV, in Le Morte Darthur, book III:

     And that penaūce god hath ordeyned yow for that dede / that he that ye shalle most truste to of ony man alyue / he shalle leue yow ther ye shalle be slayne / Me forthynketh said kynge Pellinore that this shalle me betyde but god may fordoo wel desteny

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

3. (archaic) To do away with, undo; to ruin.
   • 1900, John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (version in modern spelling)

     And yet there is at Alexandria a fair church, all white without paintures; and so be all the other churches that were of the Christian men, all white within, for the Paynims and the Saracens made them white for to fordo the images of saints that were painted on the walls.

4. (archaic) To overcome with fatigue; to exhaust.
   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night:

     worn faces (...) / they wander, wander, / Or sit foredone and desolately ponder / Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head.

   • 1911, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson:

     Foredone by the agitation of the past hour, he did not at once realise what it was that he saw.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:foredo.

Anagrams

• Frodo, do for, frood