English

far be it

A disclaimer stating that something should not come to pass, or that a person would never do or think a certain thing.

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    Origin

    Calque of Latin absit ("may it be away"), found in the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible as part of the phrase absit hoc a me ("may this [thing] be away from me") at 1 Samuel 2:30, 1 Samuel 22:15 and 2 Samuel 20:20. Wyclif translated the phrase "Fer be this fro me"; the King James Version at 2 Samuel 20:20 has "Far be it from me".

    From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    Lineage

    • derivedLatinabsit “let (him or her) be absent”

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