To deliberately choose not to do something or to give up having something you want.
From Old English 'forgan' where 'for-' means 'before' or 'away' and 'gan' means 'to go.' The word literally meant 'to go before or ahead,' but evolved to mean 'to refrain from' or 'to abstain,' with the meaning shifting over centuries.
English has a confusing word 'forego' that sounds identical but means 'to come before'—these are actually two different words with different origins that happened to merge in pronunciation, which is why some dictionaries treat 'forgo' as a variant of 'forego' even though they mean opposite things.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.