forgather

• foregather

From Scots forgather, foregather (“to gather up, assemble”), equivalent to for- +‎ gather. Cognate with Dutch vergaderen (“to assemble”), German vergattern (“to assemble; to assign duty”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /fəˈɡaðə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /fɚˈɡæðɚ/

forgather (third-person singular simple present forgathers, present participle forgathering, simple past and past participle forgathered)

1. (intransitive) To assemble or gather together in one place, to gather up; to congregate.
   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 9, in On the Road, Viking Press, →OCLC, part 2:

     Dean’s California—wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.

   • 1960, P G Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     “And she caught you?” “Not once, but twice.” [...] “Half-way under the dressing-table, were you?” “The second time. When we first forgathered, I was sitting on the floor with a chair round my neck.”

   • 1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 725:

     “I can tell you where to find them,’ she said, ‘with a fair degree of certainty; they foregather almost every evening about this time at a rather disreputable old pub.’

   • 2007, Edwin Mullins, The Popes of Avignon, Blue Bridge, published 2008, page 8:

     They found themselves obliged to forgather in Perugia, where few of them wished to be – least of all the French cardinals who would have preferred not to be in Italy at all.

• collect, begather; see also Thesaurus:assemble