Foretop

Also for-. [f. FORE- + TOP.]

  † 1.  The fore part of the crown of the head; sometimes, loosely, the top of the head. Obs.

1382.  Wyclif, Deut. xxxiii. 20. As a lioun he restide, & he took arme and fortop [L. verticem].

1387.  Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), IV. 215. Iulius Cesar a greved of his ballednesse, and heer faillede on his moolde and on his fortop; he wolde bende his heer from þe pol toward þe foreheed.

c. 1430.  Lydg., Min. Poems (Percy Soc.), 115.

a. 1529.  Skelton, Col. Cloute, 532.

1675.  J. Smith, Chr. Relig. Appeal, Preface, 1. The Abantes whose Custom it was to fight pell-mell, as Plutarch observes out of Callimachus, were wont to shave their foretops and chins, (Plutarch Thes.) Alexander’s imitation of which Custom contributed not a little toward his Conquest of the World in the opinion of the same Judicious Author.

c. 1774.  T. Erskine, in Spirit Pub. Jrnls. (1800), III. 321.

1779–81.  Johnson, L. P., Milton, Wks. II. 139. His hair, which was of a light brown, parted at the foretop, and hung down upon his shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam.

  fig.  1654.  Gataker, Disc. Apol., 12. This charge therefore appeering with an apparent lie in the foretop, gives no good presage of that, that ensueth.

  † 2.  The lock of hair which grows upon the fore part of the crown, or is arranged ornamentally on the forehead; the similar part of a wig. Obs.

c. 1290.  S. Eng. Leg., I. 317/625.

a. 1400[?].  Morte Arth., 1078. His fax and his foretoppe was filterede to-geders.

1599.  Marston, Sco. Villanie, III. xi. 227.

1603.  H. Crosse, Vertue’s Commonwealth (1878), 76. Fye vpon these frownsing Irons, poking stickes, perriwigs, embroided fore-tops, &c. which are all an euident token of that filthy kennell of mudde wherwith they are possest.

1667.  Evelyn, Mem. (1857), I. 385. Her Majesty in the same habit, her fore-top long and turned aside very strangely.

1703.  Mrs. Centlivre, Beau’s Duel, IV. i. Mercy upon me, what a Bush of Hair is there fruz’d out; in my Conscience, I believe you have got the Fore-top of some Beau’s Wig.

1712.  Hearne, Collect. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), III. 331. Henry Prince of Wales in his own short Hair, with his foretop standing up.

1772.  Nugent, trans. Hist. Friar Gerund, II. 3. He was as keen a pair of scissars at trimming a sermon as adjusting a foretop.

1814.  Scott, Wav., xi. The person who sat opposite to him could only see the foretop of his riding periwig.

  fig.  1607.  Tourneur, Revenger’s Trag., II. i. Wks. 1878, II. 51.

  † b.  fig.; esp. in phrase to take occasion, opportunity or time by the foretop (= FORELOCK). Obs.

a. 1577.  Gascoigne, Flowers, Hearbes, etc. Wks. (1587), 255. You hauing occasion fast by y^e foretop, did dally with him so long.

1602.  Marston, Antonio’s Rev., V. iii. Wks. 1856, I. 136. Opportunity shakes us his foretop.

1624.  Heywood, Captives, III. iii., in Bullen, O. Pl., IV.

1694.  Dryden, Love Triumph, III. i.

  † c.  One who wears a foretop; hence, a fop.

1597.  1st Pt. Return fr. Parnass., IV. i. 1237. Ingen. Why, who coulde endure this post put into a sattin sute, this haberdasher of lyes, this bracchidochio, this ladyemunger, this meere rapier and dagger, this cringer, this foretopp, but a man that’s ordayned to miserie! Ibid., V. i. 1435. What foretopp bewrayed this, this paper?

  3.  The tuft of hair hanging between the ears of an animal, esp. of a horse; = FORELOCK.

1607.  Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 222. A fore-top, which is granted to Horses not only for ornament sake, but also for necessity to defend their eyes.

1689.  Lond. Gaz., No. 2467/4. A Nag … with a thin Mane, without a Foretop.

1725.  Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Travelling Horse, His Foretop, Mane and Tail should be wetted with a wet Mane-Comb.

1798.  Bloomfield, Farmer’s Boy, Summer, 236.

1816.  Keatinge, Trav. (1817), II. 264, note. Wool … the tail, inside the leg, all if clean, and the fore-top.

  4.  The TOP of a foremast. Military foretop: an armed foretop of a war vessel.

1509.  Barclay, Shyp of Folys (1570), 48.

1610.  Englands Eliza, Induct. 84, in Mirr. Mag., 777.

1697.  Dampier, Voy., I. xvi. 453. Three Men were in the Fore-top when the Fore-mast broke, and one on the Boltsprit, when fell with them into the Sea, but all of them were saved.

1795.  Nelson, 8 July, in Nicolas, Disp. (1845), II. 51. The Alcide, seventy-four, struck, but soon afterwards took fire, by a box of combustibles in her fore-top, and she blew up; about two hundred French were saved by our Ships.

1833.  Marryat, P. Simple (1863), 29. ‘Captain of the foretop,’ said he, ‘up on your horses, and take your stirrups up three inches.’

1895.  P. N. McGiffin, The Battle of the Yalu, in Century Mag., L. Aug., 595/1. The sublieutenant in the military foretop was taking sextant angles and announcing the range, and exhibiting an appropriate small signal-flag.

  fig.  1641.  Milton, Reform., II. (1851), 47. A Tympany of Spanioliz’d Bishops swaggering in the fore-top of the State.

  b.  Short for fore-topgallant-masthead.

1800.  Naval Chron., III. 113. Commodore J. W. Payne’s Broad Pendant is flying at the Foretop.

  5.  U.S. The front seat on the top of a vehicle.

1850.  B. Taylor, Eldorado, xliii. (1862), 430. Rising before three o’clock is no pleasant thing, on the high table-land of Puebla, expecially when one has to face the cold from the foretop of a diligence; but I contrived to cheat the early travel of its annoyance, by looking backward to Popocatapetl, which rose cold and unclouded in the morning twilight.

1872.  ‘Mark Twain,’ Innoc. Abr., xii. 77. It was worth a lifetime of city toiling and moiling, to perch in the foretop with the driver and see the six mustangs scamper under the sharp snapping of a whip that never touched them.

  6.  Comb. (sense 4), as foretop-head, -shroud = fore-topmast-head, -shroud; foretopman, one of the men stationed in the foretop.

1710.  Lond. Gaz., No. 4752/3. Sir Edward Whitaker hoisted the White Flag on the Foretop-head of her Majesty’s Ship the Monmouth.

1816.  ‘Quiz,’ Grand Master, I. 7. Those fore-top-men I shall flog.

1860.  Gen. P. Thompson, Audi Alteram Partem, III. ci. 3. There is a young man, a fore-topman, sitting now with his Esquimaux wife, if a man can be said to sit where he has only room to lie, and eating whale-skin with his father-in-law for an anti-scorbutic.

  Hence Fore-topping = sense 3.

1683.  Lond. Gaz., No. 1807/4. A black Gelding … a sore place under the Fore-topping.