arch. and poet. Forms: see FOE. [OE. fáhman, f. fah, FOE a. + MAN.] An enemy in war, an adversary.

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a. 1000.  Polit. Laws Ælfred, v. Gif hie fah-mon ȝeierne.

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c. 1175.  Cott. Hom., 241. Ne nanman ne fiht buton wið his ifómenn.

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a. 1225.  Ancr. R., 404. Mon worpeð Grickischs fur upon his fomen, & so me ouerkumeð ham.

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1375.  Barbour, Bruce, VI. 648. He of his famen four has slayn.

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14[?].  Sir Beues, 244 (MS. M.).

        Dame, why haste thou my fader betrayde
And wyll be wedyd to his foman?

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1579.  Spenser, Sheph. Cal., Feb., 21.

        Ne euer was to Fortune foeman,
But gently tooke, that vngently came.

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1620.  Quarles, Jonah (1717), 48.

        To save us harmless from our Fo-mans jaws;
Art thou turn’d Orator to plead our cause?

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1810.  Scott, Lady of L., V. x.

        And the stern joy which warriors feel
In Foemen worthy of their steel.

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1864.  A. M‘Kay, The History of Kilmarnock, 12. The warder, whose eye from the watch-tower could distinctly descry every movement of the advancing foeman.

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