foeman

From Middle English foman (“an enemy, devil, demon”), from Old English fāhman (“enemy”), equivalent to foe +‎ man.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈfəʊmən/

foeman (plural foemen)

1. (archaic) An enemy; a foe in battle; an armed or unarmed adversary; a demon.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     a snaggy Oke, which he had torne / Out of his mothers bowelles, and it made / His mortall mace, wherewith his foemen he dismayde.

   • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 132:

     With a vicious lunge the elephant swerved to the right to dispose of this temerarious foeman who dared intervene between himself and his intended victim; but he had not reckoned on the lightning quickness that could galvanize those steel muscles into action so marvelously swift as to baffle even a keener eyesight than Tantor’s.

   • 1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 41:

     King Hygelac of the Geats had been struck down by one might swipe of the foemen, the Frisians.

   • 2000 August 8, George R[aymond] R[ichard] Martin, “Daenerys [Targaryen]”, in A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire; 3), London: Voyager, →ISBN, pages 482–483:

     I count no day as lived unless I have loved a woman, slain a foeman, and eaten a fine meal . . . and the days that I have lived are as numberless as the stars in the sky.

   • 2005, Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae‎^[1] (Historical Fiction), Random House, →ISBN:

     Who were these foemen, who had taken with them to the house of the dead ten, or as some reports said, as many as twenty for every one of their own fallen?

   • 2009 August 14, Mark Dery, “Smart Bombs: Mark Dery, Steven Pinker on the Nature-Nurture Wars and the Politics of IQ”, in BoingBoing‎^[2], retrieved 10 February 2012:

     Exhaustively knowledgeable about the science of cognition, and a foeman who gives as good as he gets (if not better) in the nature-versus-nurture culture wars, Pinker seemed the perfect foil for some of my ideas about the IQ test.

foeman

1. alternative form of foman