the.com/forte
The thing you're good at — unless you're French, then it's just loud.
means The particular thing a person does especially well, their strong suit.
from A split-personality word. As 'strong point,' it comes from French fort (strong), from Latin fortis. But the musical term forte, meaning 'loud,' comes straight from Italian forte — also from Latin fortis, just by a different route. Because of this collision, even the pronunciation is contested: purists say 'for-TAY' is really the musical term, and the talent-sense should rhyme with 'fort' — but English speakers merged them long ago, so now everyone's forte is loud whether they meant it or not.
- pronunciation split
- musicians say for-tay, everyone else says fort
- etymology trap
- from French fort, meaning strong, not talented
- fencing origin
- originally the strongest part of a sword blade
- dictionary shrug
- both pronunciations are now accepted as correct