different between forest vs backwoodsman

English

Alternative forms

• foreste (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English forest, from Old French forest, from Medieval Latin forestis (“open wood”), first used in the Capitularies of Charlemagne in reference to the royal forest (as opposed to the inner woods, or parcus), of uncertain origin. Compare Old Saxon forest, forst (“forest”), Old High German forst (“forest”), Modern German Forst (“forest”).

Medieval Latin foresta probably represents the fusion of two earlier words: one taken as an adaptation of the Late Latin phrase forestis silva (“the outside woods”), mistaking forestem for woods (—a development not found in Romance languages; compare Old French selve (“forest”)); the other is the continuance of an existing word since Merovingian times from Frankish *forhist (“forest, wooded country, game preserve”) as the general word for "forest, forested land". The Medieval Latin term may have originated as a sound-alike, or been adapted as a play on the Frankish word. In the latter case, this would make forest a doublet of frith.

Displaced native Middle English weald, wald (“forest, weald”), from Old English weald, Middle English scogh, scough (“forest, shaw”), from Old Norse skógr, and Middle English frith, firth (“forest, game preserve”), from Old English fyrhþ.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: f?r??st, IPA^(key): /?f???st/
• (US) enPR: fôr??st, f?r??st, fôr??st, f?r??st, fôrst, IPA^(key): /?f???st/, /?f???st/, /f??st/
  • California, US: IPA^(key): [?f????st?]
• Homophone: forced (some American accents)

Noun

forest (plural forests)

1. A dense uncultivated tract of trees and undergrowth, larger than woods.
2. Any dense collection or amount.

   a forest of criticism

   • 1998, Katharine Payne, Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants (page 59)

     Squealing and still propelled by the kick, the calf scrabbled through the forest of legs and into the open.

3. (historical) A defined area of land set aside in England as royal hunting ground or for other privileged use; all such areas.
   • 2013, Alexander Tulloch, The Little Book of Lancashire, The History Press ?ISBN

     [...] in places such as the Forest of Bowland there is hardly a tree in sight and much of the area is a vast tract of almost barren gritstone hills and peat moorland.

4. (graph theory) A graph with no cycles; i.e., a graph made up of trees.
   • 2000, Victor N. Kasyanov, Vladimir A. Evstigneev, Graph Theory for Programmers: Algorithms for Processing Trees, Springer Science & Business Media (?ISBN), page 16:

     Let H be a traversal of an undirected graph G = (X, U). For given H, the set U can be split into set of tree edges from the forest G_H and the set of inverse edges that do not belong to this forest.

5. (computing, Microsoft Windows) A group of domains that are managed as a unit.
   • 2008, Laura E. Hunter, Robbie Allen, Active Directory Cookbook, O'Reilly Media, Inc. (?ISBN), page 17

     Forests are considered the security boundary in Active Directory; by this we mean that if you need to definitively restrict access to a resource within a particular domain so that administrators from other domains do not have any access to it whatsoever, you need to implement a separate forest instead of using an additional domain within the current forest.

6. The colour forest green.

Hyponyms

• See also Thesaurus:forest

Meronyms

• tree
• See also Thesaurus:forest

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• forest on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

Verb

forest (third-person singular simple present forests, present participle foresting, simple past and past participle forested)

1. (transitive) To cover an area with trees.
   • 1937, Széchenyi Scientific Society, Report on the Work of the Széchenyi Scientific Society: Founded for the Promotion of Research in Natural Sciences in Hungary, Zeéchenyi Scientific Society, page 83:

     From the view-point of national economy professor Fehér communicates to us most interesting facts, which he has established in an important question now of actuality?: in the subject of foresting the Great Hungarian Plains.

Related terms

• afforest

Translations

See also

Anagrams

• Forets, Fortes, Foster, fetors, forset, fortes, fortés, foster, froste, softer

Middle English

Alternative forms

• foreste, fforest

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French forest.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?f?r?st/

Noun

forest (plural forestes)

1. A forest or wood (uninhabited forested region)
2. A preserve for hunting exclusive to royalty.

Descendants

• English: forest
• Scots: forest
• ? Welsh: fforest

References

• “forest, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-10-17.

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French forest, from Medieval Latin forestis (“open wood”), first used in the Capitularies of Charlemagne in reference to the royal forest (as opposed to the inner woods, or parcus).

Noun

forest f (plural forests)

1. forest
   • 1544, L’Arcadie-Trad-Massin, Paris:

Further reading

• “forest” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Old French

Alternative forms

• foreste

Etymology

From Medieval Latin forestis (“open wood”), first used in the Capitularies of Charlemagne in reference to the royal forest (as opposed to the inner woods, or parcus).

Noun

forest f (oblique plural forez or foretz, nominative singular forest, nominative plural forez or foretz)

1. forest, royal hunting ground

Descendants

• Franc-Comtois: fouré (Poisoux)
• Middle French: forest
  • French: forêt
• Gallo: forée (Nantais), forést
• Lorrain: [Term?] (/for?/) (St-Maurice-sur-Moselle)
• Norman: forêt (Cotentinais, Jersiais), foiret (Brayon), fouorêt (Guernesiais)
• Picard: foreû (Athois)
• Poitevin-Saintongeais: fouras (Châtellerault), fourêt (Saintongeais)
• ? Middle English: forest
  • English: forest
• ? Middle Irish: foraís
  • Irish: foraois

English

Etymology

backwoods +? man

Noun

backwoodsman (plural backwoodsmen)

1. A person who is acclimated to living in a forest area that is far removed from civilization or modern conveniences.
2. An uncivilized person.
3. (informal, UK politics) A Peer who is seldom present in the House of Lords of the United Kingdom Parliament, who may be encouraged to attend when a very important vote is expected.

Translations

See also

• woodsman
• frontiersman