Crossword clues for foray
foray
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Foray \For"ay\ (f[o^]r"[asl] or f[-o]*r[=a]"; 277), n. [Another
form of forahe. Cf. Forray.]
A sudden or irregular incursion in border warfare; hence, any
irregular incursion for war or spoils; a raid.
--Spenser.
The huge Earl Doorm, . . .
Bound on a foray, rolling eyes of prey.
--Tennyson.
Foray \For"ay\, v. t. To pillage; to ravage.
He might foray our lands.
--Sir W.
Scott.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., "predatory incursion," Scottish, from the verb (14c.), perhaps a back-formation of Middle English forreyer "raider, forager" (mid-14c.), from Old French forrier, from forrer "to forage," from forrage "fodder; foraging; pillaging, looting" (see forage (n.)). Disused by 18c.; revived by Scott. As a verb from 14c.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A sudden or irregular incursion in border warfare; hence, any irregular incursion for war or spoils; a raid. 2 A brief excursion or attempt especially outside one's accustomed sphere. vb. (context transitive English) To scour (an area or place) for food, treasure, booty etc.
WordNet
an initial attempt (especially outside your usual areas of competence); "scientists' forays into politics"
v. steal goods; take as spoils; "During the earthquake people looted the stores that were deserted by their owners" [syn: plunder, despoil, loot, reave, strip, rifle, ransack, pillage]
briefly enter enemy territory
Wikipedia
A foray was a traditional method of law enforcement in Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In view of the weakness of the executive in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was used by members of the szlachta to defend their rights.
In legal practice, foray was sanctioned by starosta officials, and was the fourth step in the execution of a legal ruling. After the guilty party refused to abandon the disputed property, starosta would call his supporters as well as opponents of the guilty party (therefore creating a temporary force of militia) and attempt to remove the guilty party from his manor.
Since the mid-17th century, forays were increasingly done without a legal sanction simply when a member of szlachta would gather his supporters and raid an estate of his opponent. They would become a common occurrence during the period of noble's anarchy in the Commonwealth.
In literature, forays were most famously portrayed in Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz, as well as in The Trilogy ( With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, Fire in the Steppe) of Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Foray is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
- Cyril Foray (1934–2003), Sierra Leonean educator, politician, diplomat and historian
- Dominique Foray (21st century), French economist
- June Foray (born 1917), American voice actress
Usage examples of "foray".
Back in Town again, his first forays into Society had gone smoothly, though there had been a dangerous few minutes the first time he had been formally introduced to Acer Loring.
Orwell down to the foray to Paris, and that is clear twenty years, there was not a skirmish, onfall, sally, bushment, escalado or battle, but Sir Nigel was in the heart of it.
I have seen Frenchmen fight both in open field, in the intaking and the defending of towns or castlewicks, in escalados, camisades, night forays, bushments, sallies, outfalls, and knightly spear-runnings.
It was approached from the road that ran behind and parallel to Engadine and it was always this entrance that Dewdrop used after one of his forays.
I was contemplating my next foray into felonious fantasy when I heard what sounded like an airplane landing in the alley.
Syour and her news was much the same, including the foray toward the Fishless Sea.
But during his three-hour period each day, he drilled his Ultima Hora for their forays into Cuba.
Spring brought forays against towns close to Ilion, to cut off any help the people might give.
Like The Shadow, Jute made his first foray in the direction of the filing cabinet.
Sarkee of Zinder heard that the Sultan of Korgum had just gone out on a razzia, united with the people of Maradee, and has taken this opportunity to make a foray.
This would be an overnight foray to a distant village, where Saif had presumably been raiding the last few days.
John owned the game at the Slumgullion, where I made my first foray behind the stick.
When she had just finished telling him about her own childhood forays into the countryside with a gang of other kids to catch tiddlers and pick fruit, how could he tell her that such simple pleasures might never be able to be enjoyed by their own children?
She places a hand on his, bends it to a more innocent place of hayloft and pine, a quick foray of unrealizable possibility, all that can obtain, here, just yards from the inhabited picnic ground.
Her own monitors had been doing their job, erasing any signs of her occasional fully wired forays onto the main nets, and there was no sign that this new Trouble, whoever it was, had been using her nodes as a staging area.