Forget

How to spell forget

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce forget

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forget mean?

1. verbTo fail to remember something, or to neglect to do something.

Forget in a sentence

• Do not forget to lock the office door before you leave.

• People often forget where they put their reading glasses.

Where does forget come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Forget comes from the Old English forgietan, built from the prefix for-, which carried a sense of 'away', 'amiss', or 'loss', and gietan, meaning 'to grasp' or 'to get'. The literal idea was therefore 'to lose one's grip on' something, an image of a thought or memory slipping out of your hold, which is a neat way to picture what forgetting actually feels like. The same for- prefix shows up in old verbs like forgive, forbid, and forsake, where it adds the flavour of doing something away or wrongly. The root gietan is the Germanic ancestor of the modern English 'get', so forget and get are close cousins; that family link is worth remembering, since it explains why the word is spelled with a single t in the base form (forget, forgot) and only doubles before a vowel suffix (forgetting, forgettable). The word has been in continuous English use since before the year 1000, changing little in meaning across that long span.

How the word is built

• for- (Old English prefix meaning 'away, amiss, loss')
• get (to grasp or obtain)