English
forest
Forest comes from Old French forest ‘royal hunting ground’, from Early Medieval Latin forestis, whose origin is disputed.
- Early Medieval Latinmodernforestis1
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400forest1‘royal hunting ground’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500forest1‘a forest or wood’
- Englishearliest quotation 1590forest1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English forest
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1590, Edmund Spenser, Book I, Canto VI: “Who after Archimagoes fowle defeat / Led her away…”.
Lineage
- Early Medieval LatinmodernforestisWiktionary, English forest
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400forestWiktionary, English forest‘royal hunting ground’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500forestWiktionary, English forest‘a forest or wood’
- Englishearliest quotation 1590forestWiktionary, English forest. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1590, Edmund Spenser, Book I, Canto VI: “Who after Archimagoes fowle defeat / Led her away…”
The story
In this sense, mostly displaced the native Middle English wode, from Old English wudu (modern English wood) and Middle English wald, wold, wæld, from Old English wald, weald (modern English wald, weald, wold).
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with forest, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *perkʷ- ‘oak’
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Today it means
noun A dense uncultivated tract of trees and undergrowth, larger than woods.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “forest”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Early Medieval Latin forestis / forest