forgive.
To pardon (someone); to waive any negative feeling towards or desire for punishment or retribution against.
Meaning & usage
To pardon (someone); to waive any negative feeling towards or desire for punishment or retribution against.
Please forgive me if my phone goes off - I'm expecting an urgent call from my boss.
Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.
To pardon (something); to waive any negative feeling over or retribution for.
To waive or remit (a debt), to absolve from payment or compensation of.
Forgive a debt, that is, tell a debtor that a repayment of a loan is no longer needed.
To accord forgiveness.
To look past; to look beyond.
The music critic loves the instrumentation of the song so much that he can forgive the confusing lyrics.
To redeem; to offset the bad effects of something.
Where this word comes from
Alteration (due to give) of Middle English foryiven, forȝiven, from Old English forġiefan (“to forgive, to give”), from Proto-West Germanic *frageban, from Proto-Germanic *fragebaną (“to give away; give up; release; forgive”), equivalent to for- + give (etymologically for- + yive). Cognate with Scots forgeve, forgif, forgie (“to forgive”), West Frisian ferjaan (“to forgive”), Dutch vergeven (“to forgive”), German vergeben (“to forgive”), Icelandic fyrirgefa (“to forgive”), Yiddish פֿאַרגעבן (fargebn, “to forgive”)
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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.