How to Use forefather in a Sentence

forefather

noun
  • Here in the land our forefathers ached for, all of our hopes will be fulfilled.
    — Gal Koplewitz, The New Yorker, 12 Nov. 2019
  • The things our forefathers stood for are now being taken away from us.
    — Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian, 25 Apr. 2017
  • Boland is one of them, as well as a forefather of the Red Dirt genre.
    — Josh Crutchmer, Rolling Stone, 22 Mar. 2025
  • Our forefathers — the people in front of us — were smart enough to set aside money for things like this.
    — Peter Marteka, Courant Community, 8 June 2017
  • Cast me out in honor of the toil and tribulation of our forefathers.
    — David Means, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2019
  • That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world.
    — Ken Denmead, WIRED, 2 Jan. 2012
  • Trapping has evolved quite a bit since our forefathers first set out for beaver in the 1800s.
    — Skye Goode, Outdoor Life, 27 Feb. 2025
  • If that’s cause for eviction, our forefathers might never have sat in the same room together.
    — Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press, 30 June 2018
  • Rise up like the American forefathers did a few hundred years ago.
    — Joe Hudicka, Forbes, 20 Feb. 2025
  • The 24-year-old grew up knowing exactly what his forefather stood for.
    — Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN, 5 Sep. 2017
  • Our forefathers and foremothers–those so fortunate as to come here by choice–did so to build a better life.
    — Carly Fiorina, Fortune, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Blow shot to superstardom as a forefather of hip-hop during the genre’s early days.
    — Brooklyn White, Essence, 9 Dec. 2020
  • The white rappers did their homework and were reverent of their Black forefathers in the genre.
    — Hazlitt, 25 May 2023
  • But Mr Kapami is wrong about his forefathers, or at least, his distant ones.
    — The Economist, 12 Apr. 2018
  • Like its forefather, the Barreda Mary Janes have three stripes, a low profile, and a round toe.
    — Irene Richardson, InStyle, 14 June 2026
  • Today, the result is a Bottrop that few of the city's coal-mining forefathers could have imagined.
    — Valerie Hamilton, USA TODAY, 13 Dec. 2017
  • Our forefather, Maklouf, and his grown sons were among them, but his wife, whose name has been lost to time, fled the village with her baby boy.
    — Saki Knafo, Condé Nast Traveler, 19 Jan. 2023
  • The boy’s sensitivities — and love of reading — mark him out for a different path than the field work of his forefathers.
    — Nicolas Rapold, Deadline, 14 Feb. 2025
  • In other words, a small number of foremothers and forefathers contributed much of the modern gene pool.
    — David Reich, The Conversation, 30 Nov. 2022
  • The Harlem of today is a global destination thanks to the vision of our forefathers.
    — Lloyd Williams, New York Daily News, 5 Aug. 2024
  • Among his forefathers, his wife said, was William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.
    — Emily Langer, The Denver Post, 2 June 2017
  • Among his forefathers, his wife said, was William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.
    — Emily Langer, Washington Post, 1 June 2017
  • But for three months a year, El Guran and the other herders live as their forefathers have for generations.
    — Washington Post, 18 Mar. 2018
  • And unlike its forefather, this reincarnation of the Marquis de Sade won’t be so easy to lock away.
    — WIRED, 21 Feb. 2023
  • The forefather's monument had been cleaned along with the four scallop shells, town officials said in a Facebook post.
    — Fox News, 18 Feb. 2020
  • The RAV4′s forefather was the iconic Prius, which put hybrids on the map.
    — Tribune News Service, cleveland, 13 Feb. 2021
  • Their forefathers and descendants have been on this land for nearly 300 years starting as slaves on the plantations.
    — John Bacon, USA TODAY, 21 Oct. 2024
  • Moritz Grossmann was one of the forefathers of German watchmaking in Glashütte.
    — Victoria Gomelsky, Robb Report, 30 Mar. 2026
  • My forefathers helped form the Soviet identity and its rituals, even before there was a country to promote them.
    — Andrew Fedorov, The Atlantic, 31 Dec. 2025
  • Boissonnault told the story of his forefathers, who first landed in Canada in 1642.
    — Alan Gomez, USA TODAY, 8 June 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'forefather.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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