forbear

verb

1. (transitive)To keep away from; to avoid; to abstain from.

   “Mr. Sheriff, I desire that this manacling may be forborn: if you please to clap a guard of a hundred men upon us, I shall pay for it. This is not only a disgrace to me, but in general to all soldiers; which doth more trouble me than the loss of my life.”

   “The earth shall soon dissolve like snow the sun forbear to shine”

   “Poor Arabs wondered why I had no mare; I forbore to puzzle them by incomprehensible talk of hardening myself, or confess I would rather walk than ride for sparing of animals:”

   “For his part, Tharoor cannot forbear to praise the achievements of men like Arthur Cotton, whose Godavari Delta irrigation scheme remains much as he left it in 1852.”

2. (intransitive)To refrain from proceeding; to pause; to delay.

   “Por[tia]. I pray you tarrie, pauſe a day or two Before you hazard, for in chooſing wrong I looſe your companie ; therefore forbeare a while, /[...]”

   “Then the king of Iſrael gathered the prophets together about foure hundred men, and ſaid vnto them, Shall I goe againſt Ramoth Gilead to battell, or ſhall I forbeare? [...]”

3. (intransitive)To refuse; to decline; to withsay; to unheed.

   “And thou ſhalt ſpeake my words vnto them, whether they will heare or whether they will forbeare, for they are moſt rebellious.”

4. (intransitive)To control oneself when provoked.

   “The kindest and the happiest pair Will find occasion to forbear.”

noun

1. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of forebear.

   “[1906] 2004, Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, Ethel Wedgwood tr. Sirs, I am quite sure that the King of England's forbears rightly and justly lost the conquered lands that I hold …”

   “One does not take one’s family name therefrom, and again the position of the mother in that group is determined through her father and his male forbears in turn; this too is a patrilineal group.”

   “Beginning with the bald declaration “I think I was cold in the womb,” the speaker in “The Forbears” then decides that his brother (who died soon after birth) must also have been cold in the womb, like his grandfather John and the forbears who antedated John:”