forklift

/ˈfɔɹklɪft/

forklift noun: a small industrial vehicle with a power-operated fork-like pronged platform that can be raised and lowered for insertion under a load, often on pallets, to be lifted and moved.

Image: Hamed Malekpour, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

forklift (plural forklifts)

A small industrial vehicle with a power-operated fork-like pronged platform that can be raised and lowered for insertion under a load, often on pallets, to be lifted and moved.
- The concrete floors of B2B sheds were already being built to an exacting degree of flatness, calibrated using lasers, so that forklifts would not teeter while lifting pallets to the highest shelves.2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2025
Synonyms:

fork hoist, forklift truck, fork truck, hi-lo, jitney, lift truck, sideloader, stacker-truck, tow-motor, trailer loader

Verb

forklift (third-person singular simple present forklifts, present participle forklifting, simple past and past participle forklifted)

To move or stack with, or as if with, such a vehicle.
- With bouncerly finesse, Frank forklifted his arms under Gerald's & plucked him off his stool, dragging him towards the back & the source of that incessant voice.2009, Garry Thomas Morse, Death in Vancouver, page 49

forklift meaning in Hindi, Arabic, Malay and Indonesian

forklift in Hindi

small industrial vehicle: फ़ोर्कलिफ़्ट forkalifṭ

forklift in Arabic

small industrial vehicle: رَافِعَةٌ شَوْكِيَّةٌ rāfiʕatun šawkiyyatun

forklift in Malay

small industrial vehicle: trak angkat susun

forklift in Indonesian

small industrial vehicle: truk angkat susun

More languagesFewer languages

forklift in Thai: รถยก rót-yók
forklift in Vietnamese: xe nâng hạ

Synonyms of forklift

fork hoist
forklift truck
fork truck
hi-lo
jitney
lift truck
sideloader
stacker-truck
tow-motor
trailer loader

All synonyms of forklift

Forms of forklift

Noun
plural	forklifts
Verb
third-person singular present	forklifts
present participle	forklifting
past participle	forklifted
past	forklifted

Plural of forklift: forklifts

Origin of forklift

From fork + lift.

Words formed from forklift

Phrases with forklift

Questions about forklift

What does forklift mean?: Forklift means a small industrial vehicle with a power-operated fork-like pronged platform that can be raised and lowered for insertion under a load, often on pallets, to be lifted and moved.
What is forklift in Hindi?: Forklift in Hindi is फ़ोर्कलिफ़्ट (forkalifṭ). See Forklift meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is forklift?: Forklift can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce forklift?: Forklift is pronounced /ˈfɔɹklɪft/.
What is the plural of forklift?: The plural of forklift is forklifts.

Words near forklift in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: forklift (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-forklift.wav.

Cite this entry: “forklift.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/forklift. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.