Forged

How to spell forged

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce forged

What does forged mean?

1. verbPast tense of forge: to have shaped metal by heating and hammering, or to have built something lasting through sustained effort.
2. verbPast tense of forge: to have produced a fraudulent copy of a document, signature, or artwork in order to deceive.
3. verbPast tense of forge: to have moved forward steadily and with determination, usually followed by 'ahead'.

Forged in a sentence

• The blacksmith forged the blade from a single bar of steel.

• The accountant had forged his manager's signature on the cheque.

• The team forged ahead with the project despite the budget cuts.

• The two companies forged a partnership that lasted decades.

• Investigators proved the will had been forged by a relative.

• The runner forged ahead of the pack in the final lap.

Where does forged come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word goes back to the Latin noun fabrica, meaning a workshop or a craftsman's place of work, which itself came from faber, a worker in metal or wood. This passed into Old French as forge, the smith's hearth where iron was heated and beaten into shape, and the related verb forgier meant to fashion or construct. English took both the noun and the verb in the 1200s, keeping the literal sense of hammering hot metal into form. From that physical idea grew two figurative branches: the constructive one (to forge a friendship or an agreement, building something lasting through effort) and the criminal one (to forge a signature, fashioning a fake), which appeared in legal English by the 1400s. The same fabrica root also gave us 'fabricate' and 'fabric', which is a useful reminder that forging, fabricating, and weaving all share the idea of making something by hand.

How the word is built

• forge (from Latin fabrica: workshop, craft)
• -ed (past tense/participle)