[f. FORE- pref. + PART.]
1. The foremost, first, or most advanced part; the front.
c. 1400. Burgh Lawis, c. 105. Þai sall leilly lyne in lenth as braidnes baith foir part and back part of þe land.
1435. Misyn, Fire of Love, I. xvii. 38. All þe inar forpartis of my saule with swetnes of heuenly myrth ar fulfild.
1483. Cath Angl., 138/2. Þe Forpante of ye hede, cinciput.
1548. Hall, Chron., Rich. III. (an. 3), 49 b. They of the Castell vexed their enemies on the foreparte.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, XVI. 324. Betwixt his neck, and foreparts.
1714. S. Sewall, Diary, 12 Nov. (1882), III. 26. I rode on, had the Snow and Rain on our backs; yet it beat on the fore-part of the Calash, and wet us pretty much.
1836. J. Grant, Random Recoll. Ho. Lords, xvi. 383. His dark hair, like the quills of the fretful porcupine, stands on end on the fore part of his head; not naturally, but is made to do so by the aid of a comb—to display, no doubt, to the greatest advantage, his finely developed forehead.
b. esp. The bow or prow of a vessel. ? Obs.
1526. Tindale, Acts xxvii. 41. The foore parte stucke fast and moved not, and the hynderparte brake with the violence of the waves.
1555. Eden, Decades (Arb.), 195. At the length with muche difficultie, turnynge the stemmes or forpartes of their shyppes ageynst the streame from whense they came, and labourynge al that they myght with their oers and sayles, they coulde scarsely ouercoome the rage of the water.
1699. Dampier, Voy., II. I. 74. The head or fore-part is not altogether so high as the Stern, neither is there so much cost bestowed on it for ornament.
† 2. An ornamental covering for the breast worn by women; a stomacher. Obs.
1600. Q. Eliz. Wardr., in Nichols’ Progresses (1823), III. 507. Item, one foreparte of clothe of sylver, enbrodered all over with rainebowes, cloudes, flames of fyer, and sonnes, of sylke of sondrye colour.
1607. Webster, Northw. Hoe, I. iii. Wks. (Rtldg.), 256/1. I confess I took up a petticoat and a raised fore-part for her; but who has to do with that?
1640. Shirley, Constant Maid, IV. iii.
| A pocket in my sleeve, and velvet hose | |
| Six times translated since they were a midwife’s | |
| Fore part, were things I wore on holidays. |
3. The earlier part.
1614. Raleigh, Hist. World, iii. § 7. It [Paradise] would deprive us of the Sunnes light, all the fore-part of the day, being seated in the East, as they suppose.
1633. Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester, Manchester al Mondo (1636), 131. He lives twice that bestowes the fore-part of his life well.
1722. Sewel, Hist. Quakers (1795), I. v. 369. In the fore part of the year 1659 there was great discord, and several factions among the people in England; for some adhered to the protector Richard, and others to the chief members of the long parliament; and the royalists made also a party.
1727. A. Hamilton, New Acc. E. Ind., II. i. 217. In the Forepart of the seventeenth Century, according to the Christian Æra, it was the greatest Port for Trade in India or China.
1852. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xv. She and her girls, in some long-forgotten fore part of the day, ‘did up the work,’ and for the rest of the time, probably, at all hours when you would see them, it is ‘done up.’
