SAT Word of the Day: forsake
Not a common word. Also, this is a pretty sad word.
🧠 Quick vocab quiz
First, try this quick vocab quiz question:
forsake most nearly means
(A) cheer up
(B) leave behind
(C) look down on
(D) take care of
(E) spread widely, as information
Take note of your answer! Write it down, or use a mnemonic to remember it. The answer is at the end of this email.
ℹ️ Part of speech
forsake is a VERB.
🗣️ Pronunciation
forsake is pronounced /fər.ˈseɪk/ or fur-SAYK.
📚️ Definition
forsake means to abandon or renounce. Example: I'm not sure I trust Eric; I feel like he'll forsake me if things ever get rough.
📰Examples
Here are some examples of forsake in usage:
He'd forsaken his home and family to pursue his dream.
She'd forsaken her religious beliefs in favor of a more secular lifestyle.
I'd forsaken my former life to start anew.
And of course, from the story itself: Even cannibals wouldn't live in such a God-forsaken place. (Yes, the reference to cannibals is very dated.)
💁🏼 Tips!
Let's be honest here. forsake is not a commonly-used word in modern English, at least not with the people I hang out with! If you do a quick search, you'll find that a huge number of instances of forsake appear either in the Christian Bible or in related contexts.
That said, we do use the adjective forsaken quite often, especially in the phrase god-forsaken, which as you may imagine, is a pretty powerful adjective phrase that basically means abandoned by whatever deity you wish to refer to.
Here are some quick examples from the corpus I use the most:
✅ Quiz answer
Answer to the quiz question: The best answer is B, leave behind.
👋 Bye for now
Hope you enjoyed forsake! Let me know your thoughts! Lots more cool stuff is coming.
Thanks for learning!
Erin