forgather
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English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
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[edit]
Verb[edit]
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, 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:
- “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 (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 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, published 2008, page 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.
Synonyms[edit]
- collect, begather; see also Thesaurus:assemble