forest
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forest¹
- /ˈfɒɹɪst/ Northern England, UK
- /ˈfɔɹɪst/ British, Southern, Standard
- /ˈfɔɾɪst/ Scotland
- /ˈfɒɾɪst/ Wales
- /ˈfɔɹɪst/ US
- /ˈfɔɹəst/ US
- /fɔɹst/ US
- /ˈfɑɹɪst/
- /ˈfɑɹəst/
- /ˈfɔɹəst/ Australia
- /ˈfɒɹəst/ New Zealand
- [ˈfɔ̟ɹəst] ~ [ˈfɞ̠ɹəst] New Zealand
Sounds like forced (US, sometimes especially in fast speech) · Rhymes with -ɒɹɪst
Where it comes from
Inherited from Middle English forest, from Old French forest, from Early Medieval Latin forestis. The Latin could be:
* from foris (“outside”), as in forestis (silva) "(wood) outside,"
* or from Frankish or Proto-West Germanic *furhisti (“forest, fir-grove, wooded land”), equivalent to fir + hurst. In which case, related to Old English fyrhþe (“forested land”), Old High German forst, forsti (“forest”), Old Norse fýri (“pine forest”). Doublet of frith.
Cognate with Dutch vorst (“copse, grove, woodland”), German Forst (“forest”).
In this sense, mostly displaced the native Middle English wode, from Old English wudu (modern English wood) and Middle English wald, wold, wæld, from Old English wald, weald (modern English wald, weald, wold).
noun forests · foreste
- A dense uncultivated tract of trees and undergrowth, larger than woods. Who after Archimagoes fowle defeat / Led her away into a foreſt wilde, / And turning wrathfull fyre to luſtfull heat, / With beaſtly ſin though her to haue defilde, / And made the vaſſal of his pleaſures vilde.
- Any dense collection or amount. a forest of criticism
- A defined area of land set aside in England as royal hunting ground or for other privileged use; all such areas. Throughout the 1500s, the populace roiled over a constellation of grievances of which the forest emerged as a key focal point. The popular late Middle Ages fictional character Robin Hood, dressed in green to symbolize the forest, dodged fines for forest offenses and stole from the rich to give to th
- A graph with no cycles; i.e., a graph made up of trees. Let H be a traversal of an undirected graph G = (X, U). For given H, the set U can be split into set of tree edges from the forest G_H and the set of inverse edges that do not belong to this forest.
- A group of domains that are managed as a unit. Forests are considered the security boundary in Active Directory; by this we mean that if you need to definitively restrict access to a resource within a particular domain so that administrators from other domains do not have any access to it whatsoever, you need to implement a separate forest inste
- The color forest green.
verb forests · foresting · forested · foreste
- To cover an area with trees. From the view-point of national economy professor Fehér communicates to us most interesting facts, which he has established in an important question now of actuality : in the subject of foresting the Great Hungarian Plains.
Forest²
Where it comes from
French surname, from Old French forest (“forest”). Compare Laforest and Deforest.
Also an English and Scottish surname, variant of Forrest and related to the above.
proper noun Forests
- A surname.
- A city, the county seat of Scott County, Mississippi, United States.
- A number of townships in the United States, in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan (3), Minnesota (2), and Missouri, listed under Forest Township.
- A hamlet in Ellerton-on-Swale parish, North Yorkshire, England (OS grid ref NZ2700).
- A locality in Circular Head Council, north western Tasmania, Australia.
-
A municipality of Brussels, Brussels Capital Region, Belgium
Similar: Vorst
- Nottingham Forest F.C.
- A male given name: Alternative form of Forrest.
Thesaurus
Closest in meaning: woods, timberland, timber, woodland, afforest, wood, old-growth, rainforest, jungle, forestry, understory, undergrowth, woody, selva, silviculture, bosque
Translations
Every language
noun dense collection of trees
| Español | bosque, floresta, selva, foresta, kaá, caá |
|---|---|
| 한국어 | 숲 sup, 삼림 samnim |
| 日本語 | 森 mori, 林 hayashi, 森林 shinrin |
| 中文 | 森林 sēnlín, 林 lín |
| हिन्दी | जंगल jaṅgal, वन van |
| Kiswahili | msitu, porini |
| Português | floresta, selva, bosque, mata |
| Français | forêt, brousse, sylve, bois, bosquet |
| Deutsch | Wald, Forst, Gehölz, Hain |
| Italiano | bosco, selva, foresta |
| Ελληνικά | δάσος dásos, δρυμός drymós, ὕλη ýli |
| Română | pădure, codru, silvă |
| Русский | лес les |
| Tiếng Việt | rừng |
| العربية | غَابَة ḡāba |
| עברית | יַעַר yáar |
Talk about this word "forest." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/forest. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. forest. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/forest "forest." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/forest.Cite this
@misc{forest_2026,
title = {forest},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/forest},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
