Forego originally meant “go or come before,” as in “Salad foregoes the main course.” But now this usage is out of fashion, although still acceptable. The only time forego is commonly used with this meaning today is in the phrase foregone conclusion, which means “a conclusion already expected or known before any discussion or investigation.” And […]

A glacier is a very large, natural piece of ice, which can move very slowly downhill, like a slow-motion river of ice. They are found in high mountain ranges and other places where ice never completely melts.  In the distant past (many thousands of years ago) glaciers gradually flowed down and spread out over Europe and […]

Flood and deluge have almost exactly the same meaning. Both words describe the disaster that occurs when water flows over its usual barriers, such as when a river or lake gets too high and the water flows over the land, in a possibly destructive way. When flood and deluge are nouns, they have exactly the same meaning, except that […]

These words have different meanings, and to add to the confusion, their spelling can be interchangeable. Here we will use the most common spelling for each one. Forbear is a verb that means to “refrain, hold off, or hold back”—i.e. to not do something, to do something less, or to wait before doing something: If you […]