I was thinking about the word forearm yesterday, as I’m sure most of us do in our more pensive moments on a Tuesday evening. I thought about how easy it is to figure out its meaning by looking at the makeup of the word. Fore means front or forward (fore+ward), as we can see in words and phrases like at the forefront, foremost, to the fore, and forehead. And arm means arm.

And then I considered that the word before must also be related to these words. But that didn’t feel quite right… Continue reading →