Citations:forspeak


 * 1)  To injure or cause bad luck through immoderate praise or flattery; to affect with the curse of an evil tongue, which brings ill luck upon all objects of its praise.
 * 2)  To bewitch, to charm.
 * 3) * 1619, “The Examination of Anne Baker of Bottesford in the County of Leicester Spinster, Taken March 1, 1618. by the Right Honourable, Francis Earl of Rutland, Sir George Manners Knight, Two of His Maiesties Iustices of the Peace for the County of Lincolne, and Samuel Fleming Doctor of Divinitie, One of His Maiesties Iustices of the Peace for the County of Leicester aforesaid”, in The Wonderfvl Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip[a] Flower, Daughters of Joan Flower neere Beuer Castle: Executed at Lincolne, March 11. 1618. Who were Specially Arraigned & Condemned before Sir Henry Hobart, and Sir Edward Bromley, Judges of Assize, for Confessing Themselues Actors in the Destruction of Henry, Lord Rosse, with Their Damnable Practises against Others the Children of the Right Honourable Francis Earle of Rutland. Together with the Seuerall Examinations and Confessions of Anne Baker, Ioan Willimot, and Ellen Greene, Witches in Leicestershire, London: Printed at London by G[eorge] Eld for I. Barnes, dwelling in the long walke neere Christ-Church, 613937578 ; republished in A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts, Relating to Witchcraft in the Counties of Kent, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincoln, between the Years 1618 and 1664. Reprinted Verbatim from the Original Editions, [...], London: John Russell Smith, 4,, , 1838,  24439978 , page 15:
 * This Examinat confesseth that shee came to Ioane Gylles house, her Child being sicke, and that shee intreated this Examinat to look on the Child, and to tell her whether it was forspoken or no, and this Examinat said it was forspoken; but when the said Child died she cannot tell.
 * 1) * 1658 (first performed 1623), ; Thomas Dekker; John Ford, The Witch of Edmonton, a Known True Story. Composed into a Tragi-comedy [in Five Acts and in Prose and Verse] by Divers Well Esteemed poets, W. Rowley, T. Dekker, J. Ford, &c. Never Printed till now, London: Printed by J. Cottrel for Edward Blackmore [...], Act II, scene i, 606668964 ; republished in  and, editors, The Works of John Ford, with Notes Critical and Explanatory by William Gifford, Esq. A New Edition, Carefully Revised, with Additions to the Text and to the Notes by the Rev. Alexander Dyce. In Three Volumes, volume III, new edition, London: James Toovey, 177 , 1869,  468932337 , pages 196–197:
 * Some call me witch, / And being ignorant of myself, they go / About to teach me how to be one; urging / That my bad tongue—by their bad usage made so— / Forspeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn, / Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse.
 * 1) * 1971, Keith [Vivian] Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in 16th and 17th Century England, London:, 71368859 ; republished as Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century England, London: , 2012,  805007047 , page 180:
 * Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the cunning man’s medical dealings was his readiness to diagnose a supernatural cause for the patient’s malady by saying that he was haunted by an evil spirit, a ghost, or ‘fairy’, or that he had been ‘overlooked’, ‘forspoken’, or, in plainer language, bewitched. Thus if any inhabitant of mid-sixteenth-century Maidstone suspected that he had been forspoken, he would go off for advice to one Kiterell, a sorcerer who lived at Bethersden, and specialised in such things:
 * 1)  To forbid, to prohibit; to oppose.
 * 2)  To say bad things about; to slander.
 * 1) * 1971, Keith [Vivian] Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in 16th and 17th Century England, London:, 71368859 ; republished as Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century England, London: , 2012,  805007047 , page 180:
 * Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the cunning man’s medical dealings was his readiness to diagnose a supernatural cause for the patient’s malady by saying that he was haunted by an evil spirit, a ghost, or ‘fairy’, or that he had been ‘overlooked’, ‘forspoken’, or, in plainer language, bewitched. Thus if any inhabitant of mid-sixteenth-century Maidstone suspected that he had been forspoken, he would go off for advice to one Kiterell, a sorcerer who lived at Bethersden, and specialised in such things:
 * 1)  To forbid, to prohibit; to oppose.
 * 2)  To say bad things about; to slander.
 * 1)  To say bad things about; to slander.
 * 1)  To say bad things about; to slander.