Is anyone ever miscast and not woefully miscast? Woefully is to miscast as scantily is to clad. Sorry, but the reviewer (WaPo's Ann Hornaday) invited English class thoughts.
Starting with a woefully miscast James Franco in the title role, continuing through a lame story line that’s merely a warmed-over version of the 1939 movie adaptation, and extending to visual effects that never approach the dazzlement and wonder of its revolutionary forbearer, “Oz the Great and Powerful” is a big, over-processed misfire that with a little more care and ingenuity might have lived up to its name.Okay. Tough luck for fans of 3D children's material for kids and adults. It's all the same to me. But back to English class. Do you know the difference between a "forbearer" and a "forbear" (or "forebear")? Hornaday doesn't. A "forbearer" is someone who refrains from doing something. If anyone is not a forbearer, it's a revolutionary.
An ancestor/forefather/progenitor is called a "forbear" or "forebear." You may think "forbear" is only a verb, but "bear," the suffix, comes from "beer," which means "one who is or exists." Does that seem weird? Break it in half. It's be-er. So you see why you don't need the "-er" on "forbear"? It's there already, in the "-ar." Don't let the drink "beer" or the animal "bear" confuse you here. Your forefathers are your forbears, and if they were forbearers you would not be a beer.
The OED quotes a 1786 Robert Burns poem "The Death And Dying Words Of Poor Mailie, The Author's Only Pet Yowe" which isn't about a bear but a sheep (yowe = ewe):
An' may they never learn the gaets,
Of ither vile, wanrestfu' pets—
To slink thro' slaps, an' reave an' steal
At stacks o' pease, or stocks o' kail!
So may they, like their great forbears,
For mony a year come thro the shears:
So wives will gie them bits o' bread,
An' bairns greet for them when they're dead.
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