Foe
adj, name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 An enemy.
"And a mans foes ſhalbe they of his owne houſhold."
- 2 A unit of energy equal to 10⁴⁴ joules.
- 3 Initialism of freedom of expression. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism, uncountable
- 4 an armed adversary (especially a member of an opposing military force) wordnet
- 5 Initialism of forces of evil. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism, uncountable
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- 6 a personal enemy wordnet
- 1 Hostile. obsolete
"he, I say, could passe into Affrike onely with two simple ships or small barkes, to commit himselfe in a strange and foe countrie, to engage his person, under the power of a barbarous King […]."
- 1 Initialism of Friends of the Earth. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
- 2 Initialism of Friends of the Earth. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
- 3 A surname from German.
- 4 Initialism of Fraternal Order of Eagles. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Man is a more dangerous foe to man than the elements of nature or animals in the wild."
Etymology
From Middle English fo (“foe; hostile”), from earlier yfoh, yvo, ifa (“foe”), from Old English ġefāh (“enemy”), from fāh (“hostile”), from Proto-West Germanic *faih, from Proto-Germanic *faihaz (compare Old Frisian fāch (“punishable”), Middle High German gevēch (“feuder”)), from Proto-Indo-European *peyk/ḱ- (“to hate, be hostile”) (compare Middle Irish óech (“enemy, fiend”), Lithuanian pi̇̀ktas (“evil”)).
Acronym of [ten to the power of] fifty-one ergs, due to equalling 10⁵¹ ergs; coined by Gerald Brown of Stony Brook University in his work with Hans Bethe.
Related phrases
More for "foe"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.