Forte, pronounced “for-tay,” is a musical term meaning to play loudly. It is the opposite of piano which means to play softly. The musical instrument, the piano, got its name from being able to play both softly and loudly; it was called the piano forte, later shortened to piano. These terms like so many in the music lexicon are Italian. Before the piano other keyboard instruments like the harpsichord could only play at one level of volume.

I wanted to post to your “My Strong Point” lesson but I could not find it here.

Forgive me but while there may be words that you can find in the OED, like “nounize,” the support for the origin of such words often comes down to poetic license. See, e.g., the reference to Shakespeare’s Henry IV. I guess I am something of purist when it comes to regular discourse or prose, and I do not easily accept poetic fabrications in the these contexts, especially when there are other normal words that can do the job. Otherwise any clever person can just come up with a new fancy shmancy word and say it’s a word. Like so — I want to express a woman’s beautiful blue eyes and how they make me feel so I say they are “celestially” or that I dive into their “bleauty.”

In other words it means that you are strong in a discipline …as in french: “tu es fort en..” or when you say in french ” les abdominos c’est le fort de Marina”…

byee

I hate to correct the teacher, but I just watched this wonderful work on the word Forte and I noticed that you posted the word “Situps” while you were actually doing “crunches”…

Normally I wouldn’t say anything, but as this is a class about the meaning of words, I had to mention it….

All the best

-j

I’ve even seen it spelled “forté” once or twice, which is sad.

So I think the deal is this: If you want to impress people who don’t know French, then say “fortay”. But if you want to impress people who do know French, then say “fort”.

In a similar way, most Americans now pronounce route the same as rout — presumably to distinguish it from root, which is a commoner word than rout.

We can even see the same thing in words that have nothing to do with French:

Lie (”recline”) and lay (”set down”) have been two different words for a thousand years; but over the last generation or two, most Americans have begun saying lay (as in, “he was laying on the floor”) when they mean lie.

Why is this? Well my guess is that they’re trying to distinguish lie (”recline”) from lie (”tell an untruth”), which is another word entirely. (And no, I’m not casting aspersions on Americans. For all I know, this may be going on in England as well, and I just don’t know about it.)

“Fortáy” reminds me of valet. I have always pronounced this word so that it rhymes with mallet or palate. I don’t know why: I guess that’s just how I learned it; and anyway my 1984 dictionary agrees. But now I only hear “valláy” — and people look at me funny when I say “vállet”.

So why is this? Well, I suspect it’s because it sounds fancier to have a “valláy” than than “vállet”. Just a guess.