Forging

How to spell forging

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce forging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forging mean?

1. verbShaping metal by heating it and hammering or pressing it into form.
2. verbProducing a fraudulent copy of a document, signature, or banknote in order to deceive.
3. verbMoving forward steadily and with effort, often despite obstacles.

Forging in a sentence

• The blacksmith was forging a horseshoe over the glowing coals.

• He was arrested for forging his employer's signature on the cheques.

• The runners kept forging ahead despite the steep final climb.

• Forging a blade by hand takes patience and a very hot fire.

• Forging a passport carries a long prison sentence.

• The company is forging ahead with its expansion plans.

Where does forging come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'forge', which English took from the Old French 'forgier', meaning to fashion or construct, especially metal at a smith's hearth. The French word descended from the Latin 'fabricari', to make or build, which in turn rests on 'fabrica', a workshop, and ultimately 'faber', a craftsman or smith. The literal sense of beating heated metal into shape arrived in English in the 1300s, and the figurative sense of fraudulently making a false copy (a forged signature or document) grew out of the same idea of fashioning something by hand, with the criminal shading appearing by the late medieval period. The same 'faber' root survives in the word 'fabricate', which neatly carries both the honest sense of building and the dishonest sense of inventing a lie. Because the soft 'g' is followed by '-ing', writers sometimes worry about whether an 'e' belongs before the suffix; in fact the silent 'e' of 'forge' is dropped, so it is simply 'forging'.

How the word is built

• forge (from Latin faber: smith, craftsman)
• -ing (verb/gerund suffix)