Foreword

How to spell foreword

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce foreword

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does foreword mean?

1. nounA short introductory section at the front of a book, usually written by someone other than the author.

Foreword in a sentence

• A famous historian wrote the foreword to the new edition.

• The author thanked her mentor in the foreword of the textbook.

Where does foreword come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly English compound, built from two native Anglo-Saxon parts: 'fore', meaning 'before' or 'in front of', and 'word', the ordinary term for a unit of speech. It is a fairly young word, coined in the nineteenth century as a deliberate translation of the German 'Vorwort', which means literally 'before-word' and was used for the introductory note at the front of a book. English already had the Latin-derived 'preface' for the same idea, but writers liked having a plain Germanic alternative made entirely from familiar elements. The spelling trap lives in that second element: it is 'word' (as in something written), not 'ward' (a direction), which is why a 'foreword' is words placed before the main text, and not the same as 'forward'.

How the word is built

• fore- (before)
• word (a unit of language)

Words that sound like foreword

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• forward: Toward the front, or onward in space or time.