forestall.
To prevent, delay or hinder something by taking precautionary or anticipatory measures; to avert.
Meaning & usage
To prevent, delay or hinder something by taking precautionary or anticipatory measures; to avert.
Fred forestalled disaster by his prompt action.
To preclude or bar from happening, render impossible.
In French, an aspired h forestalls elision.
To purchase the complete supply of a good, particularly foodstuffs, in order to charge a monopoly price.
To anticipate, to act foreseeingly.
To deprive (with of).
To obstruct or stop up, as a road; to stop the passage of a highway; to intercept on the road, as goods on the way to market.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English forestallen (“to forestall, intercept, ambush, way-lay”), from forestalle (“a forestalling, interception”), from Old English foresteall (“intervention, hindrance of justice, ambush”), from fore- (“ahead of, before”) + steall (“position”), equivalent to fore- + stall.
An ambush; plot; an interception; waylaying; rescue.
Something situated or placed in front.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English forstal, from Old English foresteall (“an intervention, hindrance (of justice), ambush, assault, offence of waylaying on the highway, fine for such an offence, resistance, opposition”), equivalent to fore- + stall.
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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.