Word of the Day: June 8, 2009 - forget

forget (fer-get) - verb

To forget is to "fail to remember; be unable to recall."

First used in the written form before the year 900. From a formal point of view, forget is exactly what it seems - a combination of for and get. However, this is not the modern English preposition for, but a prefix that in former times was a live building block of the language, denoting negation or exclusion. So here, forget's Germanic ancestor fergetan meant literally "not get," hence "lose one's hold on" and metaphorically "lose one's hold on" and metaphorically lose one's memory of."