Forest

How to spell forest

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce forest

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forest mean?

1. nounA large area covered chiefly with trees and undergrowth.

Forest in a sentence

• The hikers spent three days crossing the dense forest.

• A wildfire threatened the ancient forest on the ridge.

Where does forest come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travelled into English through Old French 'forest' in the 1200s, and that French form came from the Medieval Latin 'forestis silva', meaning 'the woodland that lies outside'. The key word was 'foris', which literally meant 'outdoors' or 'beyond the door', so a forest was originally land that lay outside the cultivated and fenced estate. In its earliest English use the term was a legal one, marking a large royal hunting ground set aside by the crown rather than simply any patch of trees. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from that administrative sense to mean any extensive tract of dense woodland. The same 'foris' root still hides inside 'foreign' and 'forfeit', a reminder that the heart of the word is the idea of being outside.

How the word is built

• forest (from Latin forestis: open wood outside the enclosed land)