Noun

(en noun)

An ancestor.

* [1906] 2004, Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, Ethel Wedgwood tr.

Sirs, I am quite sure that the King of England's forbears rightly and justly lost the conquered lands that I hold [...]

* [1936] 2004, Raymond William Firth, We the Tikopia [http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=Eiji-EnuhXUC&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&sig=aB2VV0fcWv6lkQPQatQQbDhlm_8]

One does not take one’s family name therefrom, and again the position of the mother in that group is determined through her father and his male forbears in turn; this too is a patrilineal group.

* 1997, H. L. Hix, Understanding W. S. Merwin [http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=8JIveUt8StQC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&sig=_AETFoZUYlti38_Va0zOHD4yZTk]

Beginning with the bald declaration “I think I was cold in the womb,” the speaker in “The Forbears'” then decides that his brother (who died soon after birth) must also have been cold in the womb, like his grandfather John and the ' forbears who antedated John.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)

, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}

Noun

(en noun)

(Christianity) The highest form of bishop, in the ancient world having authority over other bishops in the province but now generally as an honorary title; in Roman Catholicism, considered a bishop second only to the Pope in rank.

In Biblical contexts, a male leader of a family, tribe or ethnic group, especially one of the twelve sons of Jacob (considered to have created the twelve tribes of Israel) or (in plural) Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

* 1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , Acts II:

Men and brethren, lett me frely speake unto you of the patriarke David: For he is both deed and buryed, and his sepulcre remayneth with us unto this daye.

A founder of a political or religious movement, an organization or an enterprise.

An old leader of a village or community.

* 1819 , ”:

The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning to night, just moving sufficiently to

The male head of a tribal line or family.