Forum

How to spell forum

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce forum

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forum mean?

1. nounA meeting, event, or medium where people openly discuss ideas or exchange views.
2. nounAn online discussion board where users post messages on shared topics.
3. nounThe central public square of an ancient Roman town, used for markets and civic affairs.

Forum in a sentence

• The company held a public forum to gather feedback on the new policy.

• She found the answer in a gardening forum full of experienced growers.

• Tourists wandered through the ruins of the ancient Roman forum at midday.

• The conference offered a useful forum for sharing research between departments.

• Moderators removed the spam post from the forum within minutes.

• The guide explained that merchants once traded grain in the crowded forum.

Where does forum come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin forum, which named the open public square at the centre of a Roman town. The Latin word originally meant something like an outdoor space or enclosure, and it was probably related to foris, meaning 'out of doors' or 'outside', and to fores, the word for a door or gate. In Rome the forum was the bustling heart of civic life, the place where citizens gathered to trade, argue legal cases, and debate public affairs, so the word naturally came to suggest open discussion as well as a physical place. English borrowed it unchanged in the sense of the ancient Roman square, and by the twentieth century it had broadened to mean any meeting or medium for the exchange of views. The modern online discussion board inherits exactly this idea, which is why the spelling has stayed pleasingly simple and faithful to its Latin source.

How the word is built

• forum (Latin: public square, marketplace), unchanged in English