Forgery

How to spell forgery

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce forgery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forgery mean?

1. nounThe crime of falsely making or altering a document, signature, or artwork; also the fake object itself.

Forgery in a sentence

• The bank charged him with forgery after the signatures were proven false.

• Experts confirmed the painting was a clever forgery rather than an original.

Where does forgery come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grew out of the verb 'forge', which English took from Old French 'forgier', meaning 'to fashion or shape'. That French verb descended from the Latin 'fabricare', 'to make or construct', built on 'fabrica', a workshop or smithy, the same root that gives us 'fabric' and 'fabricate'. Originally forging simply meant hammering metal into shape at a forge, an honest craft, but by the 1500s the sense had darkened to 'fashioning something false', especially counterfeit documents and signatures. The abstract noun 'forgery', formed by adding the English suffix '-ery', appeared in the early 1600s to name both the criminal act of faking and the fake article itself. The journey from honest metalwork to crooked imitation is worth remembering, because the spelling keeps the soft 'g' of 'forge' followed by '-ery', not the '-ary' or '-ory' endings that tempt many writers.

How the word is built

• forge (to fashion, fabricate)
• -ery (noun suffix denoting the action or its product)