Forte

How to spell forte

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce forte

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forte mean?

1. nounA particular activity or skill at which a person excels.
2. adverbA musical direction instructing the performer to play loudly.

Forte in a sentence

• noun

  Detailed budgeting was never her forte, so she hired an accountant.

• adverb

  The composer marked the final chord forte to give the ending real weight.

• noun

  Public speaking is his real forte, and he volunteers for every presentation.

• adverb

  She played the opening bars softly, then switched to forte for the chorus.

Where does forte come from?

Language of origin: French

This word actually reaches English along two separate paths from the same Latin root fortis, meaning 'strong'. The sense of a personal strong point came through French, where the masculine adjective fort meant 'strong'; English speakers borrowed it in the 1600s, originally in fencing, where the forte was the strong lower half of a sword blade, the part nearest the hilt, as opposed to the weaker tip (the foible). From the duelling floor it broadened into the figurative 'the thing one does best'. The musical sense, meaning 'loud', arrived later and directly from Italian forte, again descending from fortis, and it is conventionally written and abbreviated as the letter f on a score. The same fortis root underlies a whole family of English words such as 'fort', 'fortify', 'force' and 'comfort'. The final -e is the spelling trap: it is a borrowed romance ending, not a sounded English syllable in the older pronunciation, even though many adults now say two syllables.

How the word is built

• fort (from Latin fortis: strong)
• -e (feminine/Italian ending)