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Forefather   /fˈɔrfˌɑðər/   Listen
Forefather

noun
1.
The founder of a family.  Synonyms: father, sire.
2.
Person from an earlier time who contributed to the tradition shared by some group.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Forefather" Quotes from Famous Books



... object and unsparingly he treats zoology, botany and all kingdoms ending in some kind of y, just to serve his purpose successfully. And the writers of the Scriptures are not exempted to this rule, inspired as it were, they mentioned almost every known and unknown animal which our forefather Noah saved in his Ark, and if the ass plays so an important part in the Book of books, Germania surely is entitled to some consideration in the history ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... saw'st me sit at home: Thy great forefather called me to his side— And there I built for him a second Rome; Through me it grew to be an empire's pride. A paradise of stately pleasure-grounds Arose beneath the magic of my wand; And now the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... grew up among them, she was tended with royal honors, by command of the conjuror of the tribe, that so her forefather the Sun might be propitious to them, and the Incas might show favor to the poor ruined Omaguas, in the day of their coming glory. And as she grew, she had become, it seemed, somewhat of a prophetess among them, as well as an object of fetish-worship; for she was ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... to perceive the school in which you have been brought up, young man, even if there was not evidence on this paper that your forefather served under the Cavalier Colonel Beverley, and has brought you up ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... portion of the granite rock on which the Pilgrim Fathers first set foot has since been removed from the coast, and placed in front of' 'The Pilgrim's Hall,' enclosed in an iron railing; and the anniversary of their landing, afterwards called Forefather's-day, has ever since been observed by their descendants as a day of solemn festivity, in remembrance of the mercy of Providence, which led them safely through so many difficulties and dangers; and permitted them to find a new home, and a new country, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... (b. 1847), descendant of Patrick Hepburn who came from Scotland in 1736, President of the Chase National Bank, a distinguished New York banker, has written much on financial subjects. Thomas William Lamont (b. 1870), whose forefather came from Argyllshire, is a member of the firm of J.P. Morgan & Co., and prominent in international finance. Walter Edwin Frew, President of the Corn Exchange Bank, New York, and President of the New York Clearing House is of Scottish parentage. He was a pioneer of the ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black

... a powder horn hanging over the dining room mantel, which had been in the battle of Lexington, and Tippy expected Georgina to find the same inspiration in it which she did, because the forefather who carried it was an ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... walls are suspended silk tassels, handkerchiefs, ostrich eggs, camel halters, bridles, &c. the offerings of the Bedouins who visit this tomb. I could not learn exactly the history of this Sheikh Szaleh: some said that he was the forefather of the tribe of Szowaleha; others, the great Moslem prophet Szaleh, sent to the tribe of Thamoud, and who is mentioned in the Koran; and others, again, that he was a local saint, which I believe to be ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... which we all have our own opinion. To Walpole himself Strawberry Hill was a mere plaything, and he would not have wished to be taken too seriously; as his romance of the Castle of Otranto was a literary squib at which he laughed himself, though it became the forefather of a great literary school. The process may be regarded as logical: the previous generation, rejoicing in its own enlightenment, began to recognise the difference between present and past more clearly than its ancestors had done; but generally inferred that the men of old had been barbarians. The ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... done for Steve had she been in Beatrice's position—a linen cover for the water glass; a soft shade on the window instead of the glaring white-and-gold-striped affair; exile for that ubiquitous spaniel; home cooking, with old-fashioned milk toast and real coffee of a forefather's day. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... than accuracy of design—I may describe the singular illumination adorning the sixth page, which represents the birth of Eve. Adam is asleep, reclining on the grass, which is depicted as so many inverted cones; and, if we may judge from the appearance of our venerable forefather, he could not have enjoyed a very comfortable repose on that memorable occasion, and the grass which grew in the Garden of Paradise must have been of a very stubborn nature when compared with the earth's verdure of the present day; for the weight of Adam alters not the position ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... a very well-behaved young man on the whole. He knew his duty, and did it with a steady industry, working off his dances in the spirit of his navvy forefather. But he returned between each duty dance to the young lady in black, who was always distinguishable among so many young ladies in white, and pink, and green, and blue. The Miss Dorsets and Ursula ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... protect it. Felices nimium, bona si sua norint, Angligenae! And yet there are not wanting malecontents amongst us, who, surfeiting themselves on too much happiness, would persuade the people that they might be happier by a change. It was indeed the policy of their old forefather, when himself was fallen from the station of glory, to seduce mankind into the same rebellion with him, by telling him he might yet be freer than he was; that is, more free than his nature would allow, or, if I may so say, than God could make him. We have already all the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... the natural family as the origin of all society. The family in the narrower sense, the children of one father in one house, grew into a more extended family, the gens. Such were the Alkmaionidai, the Julii, or the Scyldingas, the real or artificial descendants of a real or supposed forefather. The nature of the gens has been set forth often enough. If it is a mistake to fancy that every Julius or Cornelius was the natural kinsman of every other Julius or Cornelius, it is equally a mistake to think that the gens Julia or Cornelia was in its origin a mere artificial association, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... made an expedition to Ethiopia and immediately afterwards had ended his life, Apries the son of Psammis received the kingdom in succession. This man came to be the most prosperous of all the kings up to that time except only his forefather Psammetichos; and he reigned five-and-twenty years, during which he led an army against Sidon and fought a sea-fight with the king of Tyre. Since however it was fated that evil should come upon him, it came by occasion of a matter which I shall relate at greater length in the Libyan ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... leadership of Hanuman—the soldier, statesman, dramatist, poet, god, who is so celebrated in history (that of India s.v.p.). The oldest and best of all Sanskrit dramas, Hanuman-Natak, is ascribed to this talented forefather of ours. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... reason that impelled his forefather, Judas of old. The desire to enrich himself. For every hitherto unsuspected rebel that shall be brought to justice and whose treason shall be proven by his agency, he claims the half of that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... exactly the sort of place I wanted, and there we settled. Janet was afraid I would not be satisfied, because it is not exactly part of Croftangry; but I stopped her doubts by assuring her it had been part and pendicle thereof in my forefather' ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... from Moses and onward. Take Apelles, at the head of a long list of wonderful painters; philosophers, from Socrates to Francis Bacon; discoverers and inventors, from the man who first made musical instruments, in the lifetime of Adam our forefather, to Watt and the steam engine. Take any or all of them; we are very glad they lived and worked, we are the better for remembering them; but I ask you, what are they ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... yore there lived a forefather of the Prince of Tosa who went by the name of Yamanouchi Kadzutoyo. At the age of fourteen this prince was amazingly fond of fishing, and would often go down to the river for sport. And it came to pass one day that he had gone thither ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... these, and it was said that they had first of all belonged to one who had fought as a shield maiden at the great battle of Dunheidi, by the side of Hervoer, the sister of the mighty hero Angantyr. His forefather had won them at that time, and now they were worn by one who was surely like the Valkyries, for no fairer or more wondrous to look on in war gear could they be than our ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... world, had perished in the East, from the evil influence of the universal practice of slave- holding, as well as from the degradation of that Jewish nation which had been for ages the great witness for these ideas; and all classes, like their forefather Adam—like, indeed, the Old Adam—the selfish, cowardly, brute nature in every man and in every age—were shifting the blame of sin from their own consciences to human relationships and duties, and therein, to the God who had appointed them; and ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... such a hue and cry about her, and so many witnesses to testify the harm she had done, that all men held the case proven, and she was burnt in the sight of all the village out upon the common yonder by order of our forefather, whose office it was to see the law enforced. There were then many of these gipsy folk scattered about the common and forest, and this old witch belonged to them. They mustered strong upon the heath, and it was said that if the villagers had not ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... have set the valley in flames from one end to the other rather than have allowed the foreigners to seize it. Had not his forefather perished in fire on yonder hill rather than ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... of rectifying my notes on the origin of the Huwayta't tribe.[EN92] According to their own oral genealogists, the first forefather was a lad called 'Alayn, who, travelling in company with certain Shuraf ("descendants of the Apostle"), and erg held by his descendants to have been also a Sherif, fell sick on the way. At El-'Akabah he was taken in charge by 'Atyyah, Shaykh of the then powerful ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... our victorious Edward,[173] as they say, Gave Wales a prince on that propitious day, Why may not years, revolving with his fate, Produce his like, but with a longer date; One, who may carry to a distant shore The terror that his famed forefather bore? 140 But why should James or his young hero stay For slight presages of a name or day? We need no Edward's fortune to adorn That happy moment when our prince was born: Our prince adorns his day, and ages hence Shall wish his birth-day for some ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... have differed very materially from the original—as widely, perhaps, as we differ from the primordial cell; but it would only have differed by addition, and could no more in any generation resume its latest development without having passed through the initial stage of being what its first forefather was, and doing what its first forefather did, and without going through all or a sufficient number of the steps whereby it had reached its latest differentiation, than water can rise above its ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler



Words linked to "Forefather" :   predecessor, ascendent, sire, ancestor, root, ascendant, father, patriarch, antecedent



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