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fordo

UK /fɔː(ɹ)ˈduː/obsolete

fordo is a verb meaning “To kill, destroy” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-R-D-O and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 56 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does fordo mean?

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo kill, destroy.

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo annul, abolish, cancel.

  3. 3

    archaicTo do away with, undo; to ruin.

    And yet there is at Alexandria a fair church, all white without paintures; and so be all the other churches that were of the Christian men, all white within, for the Paynims and the Saracens made them white for to fordo the images of saints

  4. 4

    archaicTo overcome with fatigue; to exhaust.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce fordo?

  • UK /fɔː(ɹ)ˈduː/

Fordo has 2 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of fordo

  • fordoes present, singular, he/she/it
  • fordoing participle, present
  • fordid past
  • fordone participle, past
  • foredo

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is fordo?

Fordo appears about once in every 56 million words in written English, the 234,209th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Where does fordo come from?

From Middle English fordon, from Old English fordōn (“to undo, bring to naught, ruin, destroy, abolish, kill, corrupt, seduce, defile”), from Proto-West Germanic *fradōn (“to ruin, destroy”), equivalent to for- + do. Cognate with Saterland Frisian ferdwo (“to waste, consume”), West Frisian ferdwaan (“to waste”), Dutch verdoen (“to kill, waste”), German Low German verdoon (“to waste, consume”), German vertun (“to waste, spend, consume”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).