forbreak 
I than . . . farbrak the entencioun of hir that entend- 
ede yit to seyn other thinges. 
Chaucer, Boethius, iv. prose 1. 
forbmiset, t. [ME. forbrnxen. forbroscH, fur- 
brisen; (.for- 1 + bruise, .] To bruise badly 
or exceedingly. 
In a chayer men aboute him bare 
AI forbruaed, bothe bak and syde. 
Chaucer, Monk's Tale, 1. 624. 
forbuyt, . t. [ME. "forbyen, forbiggen, forburj- 
gen; < /or- 1 + buy, v. j To buy off ; ransom ; re- 
deem. 
But he, wliiche hyndreth euery kinde, 
And for no golde mail be forbought. 
Gmcer, Conf. Amant., ii. 
forby, foreby (fQr-bi', for-bi'), adv. and prep. 
[The form foreby, which is less common, snows 
more clearly the origin of the first element ; < 
ME. forby, forbi,forbe, adv. and prep., by, past, 
near (of LG. or Scand. origin: D. voorbij = 
MLG. vorbi, LG. vorbi, vorbi = G. vorbei = Dan. 
forbi = Sw. forbi, past, by, over, at an end) ; 
< for (equiv. to /ore 1 ), before, 4- by 1 .] I. adv. 
It. By; past; near. 
The child gun forby for to pace. 
Chaucer, Prioress's Tale, 1. 117. 
When he cam to hia lady's hour door 
He stude a little forbye. 
Brawn Adam (Child's Ballads, IV. 61). 
2. Beyond; besides; over and above. [Scotch.] 
Lang mayst thou teach . . . 
What pleugh flts a wet soil, and whilk the dry ; 
And mony a thousand useful things forby. 
Ramsay, Poems, II. 893. 
II. prep. If. By; past; near; hard by. 
Alle that gane forbi the wai. Ps. Ixxix. 30 (ME. version). 
A little beyond . . . the river waxeth sweet, and run- 
neth/ore by the city fresh and pleasant. 
Sir T. More, Utopia (tr. by Robinson), ii. 2. 
As when a Faulcon hath, with nimble flight, 
Flowne at a flush of Ducks foreby the brooke. 
Spenser, F. Q., V. 11. 54. 
2. Beyond; besides; over and above. [Now 
only Scotch.] 
I helded mi hert to do, forbi al thinge, tbi rightwise- 
nesses. Ps. cxviii. 112 (ME. version). 
Forbye the ghaist, the Green Room disna vent weel in 
a high wind. Scott, Antiquary, xi. 
forcarvet, [ME./orterpen (pret./orfcar/,/or- 
carf, pp. forcoreen), < AS. forceorfan (pret. for- 
cearf,pi. forcurfon, pp. forcorfen), cut through, 
cut off or away, cut down, <for- + ceorfan, cut, 
carve: see /or- 1 and carve 1 .] To cut through ; 
cut completely ; cut off. 
Seven chains with his swerde 
Our klngforcarf amidward. 
Richard Coer de Lion, 1. 1825. 
forgat (for-sa'), . [F., < Pr. forsat(= Sp./or- 
zado = Pg. foryado = It. forzato), prop. pp. (= 
F. fores') offorsar = Sp. forzar = Pg. for^ar 
= It. forzare = P. forcer, E. force: see force 1 , 
v.~] In France, a convict condemned to forced 
labor in a prison or in a penal colony : a sub- 
stitute for the older term galerlen (galley-slave), 
under changed conditions. 
forcatt, . [< It.forcata, fork, crotch (cf.for- 
cato, forked), < foroa, a fork : see fork."] A rest 
for a musket. 
forcauset, conj. [Adv. phr. for cause run toge- 
ther as one word, as by cause, now because.'} Be- 
cause ; for the reason that. 
Andforcause it is so necessary for hime, I do not onelie 
cause him to rede it over, but also to practise the preceptes 
of the same. Babees Book (E. E. T. S.), xxii. 
force 1 (fors), n. [< ME. force, fors, < OF. force, 
F. force = Pr. forsa, forza = OSp. forza, Sp. 
fuerza = Pg. form = It. forza, < ML. fortia, 
strength, force, < L./orto, OL.forctis, strong: 
see fort.~\ 1. In general, strength, physical or 
mental, material or spiritual; active power; 
vigor; might. 
O myhty lord, of power myhtieat, 
Withoute whom al force is febilnesse. 
Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 247. 
Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he 
died : his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. 
Deut. xxxiv. 7. 
Beauty loses its force, if not accompanied with modesty. 
Steele, Tatler, No. 34. 
It is as if only from the force of habit. 
W. M. Baker, New Timothy, p. 288. 
What he [Dryden] valued above all things was Force, 
though in his haste he is willing to make a shift with its 
counterfeit, Effect. 
Lowell, Among my Books, 1st ser., p. 74. 
2. Power exerted against will or consent ; com- 
pulsory power; coercion; violence; especially, 
violence to person or property, in law it implies 
either the exertion of physical power upon persons or 
things, or the exercise of constraint of the will by display 
2318 
of physical menace. Words do not constitute force in this 
sense, but gestures may. Force is implied in every case of 
trespass, disseizin, or rescue. 
To synge also, bi force he was constreyned. 
Political Poems, etc. (ed. Furnivall), p. 56. 
Who overcomes 
By force, hath overcome but half his foe. 
Hilton, P. L., 1. 649. 
Right I have none, nor hast thou much to plead : 
"1'is force, when done, must justify the deed. 
Dryden, Cym. and Iph., 1. 521. 
It seems I broke a close with force and arms. 
Tennyson, Edwin Morris. 
3. Moral power to convince the mind; power 
to act as a motive or a reason ; convincing pow- 
er: as, the force of an argument. 
The examples of others calamity and misfortunes, though 
ever so manifest and apparent, have yet but little force to 
deter the corrupt nature of man from pleasures. 
Bacon, Moral Fables, vi., Expl. 
4. Power to bind or hold, as of a law, agree- 
ment, or contract. 
When an absolute monarch commandeth his subjects 
that which seemeth good in his own discretion, hath not 
his edict the force of a law, whether they approve or dis- 
like it? Hooker, Eccles. Polity, I 10. 
A testament is of force after men are dead. Heb. ix. 17. 
The high duties which came Into force had the effect of 
diminishing the supply of brandy. 
S. Dowell, Taxes In England, II. 55. 
This act had been in force a quarter of a century. 
Macaulay, Hist. Eng., vi. 
5. Value; significance; meaning; import: as, 
I do not see the force of your remark. 
Several who make use of that word [proportion] do not 
always seem to understand very clearly the force of the 
term. Burke, Sublime and Beautiful, iii. f 2. 
6f. Weight ; matter ; importance ; consequence. 
Compare no force, below. 
What/ors were it though al the toun bihelde? 
Chaucer, Troilus, 11. 378. 
And those invasions, uncle, were of force. 
Shak., 1 Hen. VI., Iii. 1. 
7. A union of individuals and means for a com- 
mon purpose ; a body of persons prepared for 
joint action of any kind ; especially, a military 
organization ; an army or navy, or any distinct 
military aggregation : as, a force of workmen ; 
a police force; the military and naval forces of 
a country; the party rallied its forces for the 
election. 
He placed forces in all the fenced cities of Judah. 
2 Chron. xvii. 2. 
Macb. What soldiers? . . . 
Sen. The English force. Shak., Macbeth, v. 3. 
His Body was not only rescued, but his Forces had the 
better of the Day. Ilowell, Letters, I. vi. 6. 
8. InpkjWiOf: (a) Strictly, the immediate cause 
of a change in the velocity or direction of mo- 
tion of a body ; a component acceleration, due 
to a special cause, paired with the mass of the 
moving body ; a directed or vector quantity of 
the dimensions of a mass multiplied by an ac- 
celeration or rate of change of a velocity, this 
quantity representing the instantaneous effect 
of any definite cause affecting the motion of a 
body. The distinct mechanical apprehension of force is 
modern. Archimedes discovered the elements of the the- 
ory of the pressures upon bodies at rest, but it was not 
until the seventeenth century that, by the labors of math- 
ematicians from Galileo to Newton, the general mode in 
which bodies move became sufficiently understood to give 
a perfectly definite meaning to the word, and indeed the 
development of the idea has not yet ceased. A particle 
infinitely remote from others, so that no special influ- 
ences would work upon it, would retain a velocity con- 
stant in amount and direction. The effect of any cause is 
to produce an alteration of velocity ; and when this hap- 
pens the cause is said to exert force upon the particle. 
The explanation of what is meant by & force is dependent 
upon the mechanical notion of the composition of mo- 
tions, according to which, for example, if a man walks on 
the deck of a ship, his motion relatively to the sea is said 
to be compounded of his motion relatively to the ship and 
of the motion of the ship relatively to the sea. In gen- 
eral terms, if a particle which at any instant is at any 
point of space, A, has a partial or component motion which 
at the end of a second would carry it to a point B, and at 
the same time has 
another compo- Q/ _ 7 A 
nent motion which 
would carry it in 
the same time to a 
point C, the result 
of the two motions 
will be that it is 
Parallelogram of Forces. 
carried to a point D, such that ABCD is a parallelogram, as 
in the figure. It necessarily follows that accelerations of 
velocity are compounded in a similar manner : namely, if 
a particle is at any instant under such circumstances that 
according to a law of nature its velocity undergoes the ac- 
celeration represented by the line AB, while at the same 
time, owing to other circumstances, it undergoes another 
alteration represented by the line AC, these two altera- 
tions are compounded by the same principle ; and if the 
point D completes the parallelogram ABCD, the altera- 
tion represented by the diagonal AD is the result of com- 
pounding the two other alterations. This is called the 
principle of the paralleloyram of forces. The polygon of 
force 
forces is merely a complicated application of the sane 
principle, according to which, if the velocity of a particle 
experiences several simultaneous alterations, represented 
by all the successive sides but one of a polygon taken in one 
continuous order, the result is an alteration represented 
by the last side in the direction of the last point from the 
first. The operation of thus compounding several simul- 
taneous changes of velocity is termed the cumpotrition of 
forces, the partial changes are termed components, and 
the result of the operation the resultant. When a body is 
under the influence of a force, it has what is called a ten- 
dency to motion, which consists in its actually receiving, 
umk-r all circumstances, in each unit of time, so long as 
the force acts, a motion in a definite direction and of fixed 
amount, which motion is compounded with the motion 
already impressed upon the body, together with the effects 
of other forces to which it may be siimtltaneously subject. 
Thus, every body at the surface of the earth, in conse- 
quence of the force of gravity, actually receives an increase 
of downward velocity at the rate of 32 feet per second ; 
and if it does not fall on the whole, it is because it is at 
the same time, in consequence of the elastic compression 
of the support upon which it rests, projected upward with 
the same increase of velocity per second. The component 
forces when due to definite causes are also called impressed 
forces ; the resultant of all of them is called the effective 
farce. By the same principle, any alteration of velocity 
may be separated into several, and this is called the reso- 
lution of forces, althotigh no one of the components may 
represent the total effect of any definite cause. When 
a velocity or alteration of velocity is thus resolved into 
three components at right angles to one another, each is 
termed the resultant resolved in that direction. By the 
law of action and reaction, whenever a body has its velo- 
city altered owing to any cause, some other body has its 
velocity altered in precisely the opposite direction. The 
alterations are not of equal magnitude, but when each is 
multiplied by a quantity which is constant for each por- 
tion of matter undergoing an alteration of velocity this 
constant being termed the mass or amount of matter 
the two products are equal. All alterations of velocity 
take place gradually and continuously. The rate of change 
of velocity, together with its direction, coupled with or 
multiplied by the mass of the body undergoing the change 
of motion, is a force, properly so called, or accelerating 
force. According to this, the accepted view of the mat- 
ter, '"/''.' is nothing occult, but is simply the product of a 
mass by a component acceleration due to a definite posi- 
tion relatively to another body or to some other circum- 
stance. Nevertheless, many writers regard force as an 
occult something which causes or explains the alterations 
of the velocities of bodies ; and no writers who employ 
the word at all altogether avoid the use of phrases which 
seem to bear such a meaning. An impulsive force is the 
amount of a sudden finite change of motion multiplied by 
the mass of the moving body ; It is not supposed there 
really are any such forces, but it is occasionally convenient 
to regard forces as impulsive. A force is defined by its in- 
tensity or amount, its direction, its point of application, 
and the time at which it exists. The point of application 
of a force is the particle which is immediately and directly 
affected by it. 
Force, then, is of two kinds, the stress of a strained ad- 
joining body, and the attraction or repulsion of a distant 
body. W. K. CK/ord, Lectures, II. 26. 
Loosely (6) Any mechanical cause or ele- 
ment. This use of the word, which dates from before 
the development of clear conceptions of dynamics, is now 
obsolete with physicists except in special connections. 
Older writers speak of momentum and even of inertia as a 
force. Such expressions, and even the reference to pres- 
sures as forces (except in the phrase centrifugal force), are 
now obsolete. On the other hand, accelerations are still 
frequently called forces. Energy is now rarely termed 
force, except in the phrase living force (vis viva): thus, in 
technical language, it is no longer correct to speak of the 
force of the waves or of a cannon-ball, but of their power 
or energy. Special affections of matter giving rise to force, 
such as elasticity and electrification, are frequently called 
forces, although they are properly powers. Other phe- 
nomena, such as electricity, light, etc., are still loosely 
called forces by some technical writers. 
If we accept force as the dynamic aspect of existence, 
the correlate of matter, we have a firm, speculative foun- 
dation for the first law of motion, which expresses in an 
intelligible formula both the constancy of existence and 
the varieties of its distribution. 
G. H. Lewes, Probs. of Life and Mind, II. v. 13. 
9. Some influence or agency conceived of as 
analogous to physical forces: as, vital forces; 
social forces; economic forces; developmental 
forces. 
'Ihr belief that the living hand is a natural collector and 
conveyor of force has been current in all ages and is by 
no means extinct. Amer. Anthropologist, I. 53. 
We witness with our own eyes the action of those forces 
which govern the great migration of the peoples now his- 
torical in Europe. Lowell, Fireside Travels, p. 16. 
10. In billiards, a stroke on the cue-ball some- 
what below the center, causing it to recoil af- 
ter striking the object-ball. 11. The upper 
die in a stamping-press. E. H. Knight. 
The upper die was the cameo, technically the male-die, 
punch, or force [in stamping sheet-metal]. 
Jour. Franklin Inst., CXXII. 327. 
Ablatitious force. See ablatitirms. Active force. See 
vis viva. Animal force, that force which results from the 
muscular power of men, horses, and other animals. Ann 
of a force. See moment of a force, under moment. Car- 
tesian measure of force. See Cartexian. Catalytic 
force. See catalytic. Center of force. See center!. 
Central force. See central. Centrifugal force. [NL. 
vis centrifnga: a terni introduced by Huygens in 1673. 
The principle had been vaguely employed by the ancient 
astronomer Aristarchus to explain why the moon does not 
fall to the earth.) (a) Properly, a quantity of the dimen- 
sions of a force, the product of the mass of a particle 
