Forge

How to spell forge

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce forge

What does forge mean?

1. verbTo shape metal by heating it and hammering or pressing it, or the furnace and workshop where this is done.
2. verbTo produce a fraudulent copy of something, such as a signature, document, or banknote, in order to deceive.
3. verbTo move forward steadily and with effort, or to make strong progress.

Forge in a sentence

• The blacksmith heated the iron in the forge until it glowed.

• He was charged after trying to forge his employer's signature on the cheque.

• Despite the setbacks, the team continued to forge ahead with the project.

• Skilled workers can forge a blade from a single bar of steel.

• Criminals sometimes forge official documents to cross borders.

• The runners began to forge towards the finish line in the final lap.

Where does forge come from?

Language of origin: French

Forge entered English in the 1300s from Old French forge, meaning a smith's workshop or furnace. The French word descends from the Latin fabrica, which meant a workshop or a piece of skilled craftsmanship, and that in turn was built on faber, the Latin word for a craftsman, especially a worker in metal. So the literal idea at the root is a place where a skilled smith shapes metal. The verb sense of physically beating heated metal into shape grew naturally out of the noun, and by the 1400s English had stretched it figuratively to mean fabricating something false, such as a counterfeit signature or document. The same faber root survives in the word fabric and in the surname Faber, which is why the spelling keeps that ancestry hidden behind a simple modern look.

How the word is built

• forge (from Latin fabrica: workshop, from faber: craftsman, smith)