fordo

/fɔː(ɹ)ˈduː/

Etymology

From Middle English fordon, from Old English fordōn (“to undo, bring to naught, ruin, destroy, abolish, kill, corrupt, seduce, defile”), from Proto-West Germanic *fradōn (“to ruin, destroy”), equivalent to for- + do. Cognate with Saterland Frisian ferdwo (“to waste, consume”), West Frisian ferdwaan (“to waste”), Dutch verdoen (“to kill, waste”), German Low German verdoon (“to waste, consume”), German vertun (“to waste, spend, consume”).

fordo means to kill, destroy. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 91 out of 100.

fordo is pronounced /fɔː(ɹ)ˈduː/.

Why “fordo” is a great word

FORDO — [Verb] To destroy, ruin, or kill; to undo or do away with utterly. From Middle English fordon, from Old English fordōn ("to undo, ruin, destroy"), from the prefix for- (here meaning "completely, away") + dōn ("to do"). Cognate with Dutch verdoen and German vertun. Unlike "undo," which implies a reversible correction, or "exhaust," which denotes a specific depletion, to fordo is to enact an absolute, terminal negation. It is the fire that consumes the library, the winter that salts the earth, the word that ends the argument by ending the arguer—the stark English word for the point beyond which there is no doing, or being, ever again.

verb

To kill, destroy.“[…]This doth betoken / The coarse they follow did with desperate hand / Foredoe it’s own life.”
To annul, abolish, cancel.“And that penaūce god hath ordeyned yow for that dede / that he that ye shalle most truste to of ony man alyue / he shalle leue yow ther ye shalle be slayne / Me forthynketh said kynge Pellinore that this shalle me betyde but god may fordoo wel desteny”
To do away with, undo; to ruin.“And yet there is at Alexandria a fair church, all white without paintures; and so be all the other churches that were of the Christian men, all white within, for the Paynims and the Saracens made them white for to fordo the images of saints that were painted on the walls.”
To overcome with fatigue; to exhaust.“worn faces (...) / they wander, wander, / Or sit foredone and desolately ponder / Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head.”