forgather
English
Alternative forms
- foregather
Etymology
From Scots forgather, foregather (“to gather up, assemble”), equivalent to for- + gather. Cognate with Dutch vergaderen (“to assemble”), German vergattern (“to assemble; to assign duty”).
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /fəˈɡaðə/
- (General American) IPA(key): /fɚˈɡæðɚ/
Verb
forgather (third-person singular simple present forgathers, present participle forgathering, simple past and past participle forgathered)
- (intransitive) To assemble or gather together in one place, to gather up; to congregate.
- 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 9, in On the Road, Viking Press, OCLC 43419454, part 2:
- Dean’s California—wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.
- 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855:
- “And she caught you?” “Not once, but twice.” [...] “Half-way under the dressing-table, were you?” “The second time. When we first forgathered, I was sitting on the floor with a chair round my neck.”
- 1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance, Faber & Faber 2004 (Avignon Quintet), p. 725:
- “I can tell you where to find them,’ she said, ‘with a fair degree of certainty; they foregather almost every evening about this time at a rather disreputable old pub.’
- 2007, Edwin Mullins, The Popes of Avignon, Blue Bridge 2008, p. 8:
- They found themselves obliged to forgather in Perugia, where few of them wished to be – least of all the French cardinals who would have preferred not to be in Italy at all.
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Synonyms
- collect, begather; see also Thesaurus:assemble
Translations
To assemble or gather together in one place
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