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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

forby.

Uncommon; out of the ordinary; extraordinary; superior.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/fəˈbʌɪ/UK

  1. Uncommon; out of the ordinary; extraordinary; superior.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal
    He's a forbye man.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English forby, forbi, of Middle Low German or North Germanic origin, equivalent to fore- + by. Compare Saterland Frisian foarbie (“beyond, past”), West Frisian foarby (“over, beyond, past”), Dutch voorbij (“beyond, past”), Low German vörbi, vörbie (“over, up, gone, finished, past”), German vorbei (“over, gone, past”), Danish forbi, Swedish förbi. More at fore, by.

adv/fəˈbʌɪ/UK

  1. Past; by; beyond.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal

  2. Uncommonly; exceptionally.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal
    He was forby kind.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English forby, forbi, of Middle Low German or North Germanic origin, equivalent to fore- + by. Compare Saterland Frisian foarbie (“beyond, past”), West Frisian foarby (“over, beyond, past”), Dutch voorbij (“beyond, past”), Low German vörbi, vörbie (“over, up, gone, finished, past”), German vorbei (“over, gone, past”), Danish forbi, Swedish förbi. More at fore, by.

prep/fəˈbʌɪ/UK

  1. Beyond; past; more than; greater than; over and above; moreover.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal

  2. Past; gone by; over.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal

  3. Near; beside; by, close to.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal

  4. On one side; out of the way.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal

  5. Besides; in addition to; as well as; not to mention.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal
    There was other six forby me.

  6. With the exception of; not taking into account.

    Northern-England · Scotland · UK · archaic · dialectal
Where this word comes from

From Middle English forby, forbi, of Middle Low German or North Germanic origin, equivalent to fore- + by. Compare Saterland Frisian foarbie (“beyond, past”), West Frisian foarby (“over, beyond, past”), Dutch voorbij (“beyond, past”), Low German vörbi, vörbie (“over, up, gone, finished, past”), German vorbei (“over, gone, past”), Danish forbi, Swedish förbi. More at fore, by.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.