Forwear

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An archaic verb meaning to wear something out thoroughly until it is worn away or exhausted
2. Obsolete English term for wearing down or using up something until nothing of it remains
3. Old word describing the act of tiring out or wasting away through long and steady use

Etymology: "Forwear" is an archaic verb meaning to wear out or waste away through long use, and its history is simply a matter of two English parts. The first is the prefix "for-", which in Old English carried a sense of destruction or completeness, as in "forlorn" and "forget". The second is "wear", the familiar verb for using up or deteriorating from use. Joined together, the pair intensified the idea: to wear away entirely, to ruin by wearing. The word came into English from Middle English "forweren", which was built the same way from "for-" and the verb "weren" or "weren" (to wear). Its history therefore runs entirely through English itself, with no foreign borrowing involved, and it belongs to the medieval period rather than to any later coinage.