Word.ws English Dictionary

forte

/ˈfɔːteɪ//ˈfoɹ.teɪ/

forte noun: a strength or talent; a strong point.

forte: a strength or talent; a strong point
Image: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

forte (plural fortes)

  1. A strength or talent; a strong point.
    • He writes respectably, but poetry is not his forte.
    • Between ourselves, the country is rather triste, and you have given me positively a sensation; yet my forte is not the Arcadian: however, I will do my petit possible to console you for the loss of le beau Lindor, who was my predecessor.1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 115
  2. The strong part of a sword blade, close to the hilt.

Adverb

forte (comparative more forte, superlative most forte)

  1. Loudly, as a dynamic in a piece of music.
    • (abbreviation) f
    • The musicians played the passage forte.

Adjective

forte (comparative more forte, superlative most forte)

  1. Loud.
    • This passage is forte, then there's a diminuendo to mezzo piano.

Noun (2)

forte (plural fortes)

  1. A passage in music to be played loudly; a loud section of music.
    • This forte marks the climax of the second movement.

Proper noun capitalized: Forte

Forte (plural Fortes)

  1. A surname.

forte meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam

forte in Hindi

forte, virtue, strong point
ख़ूबी xūbī

forte in Tamil

உரத்த, தனித்தன்மை, வன்மைக்கூறு

forte in Bengali

বিশেষ দক্ষতা

forte in Malayalam

strong point, strength, speciality
ശക്തി, ബലം, വിശേഷശക്തി, ബലാംശം, വിശിഷ്ടഗുണം, ശ്രേഷ്ഠഗുണം
More languagesFewer languages
forte in Kannada
ಬಲ, ಸಾಮರ್ಥ್ಯ, ದಕ್ಷತೆ, ಹೆಗ್ಗಳಿಕೆ
forte in Gujarati
ફોર્ટે
forte in Nepali
फोर्टे

Examples of forte in a sentence

  • The dynamic marking in bar 40 is forte.
  • There are two parts to the sword: the forte and the debole.
  • I definitely leaned towards the mountain bike, as road cycling isn't really my forte.

All 14 example sentences with forte

Synonyms of forte

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of forte

Forms of forte

Noun
pluralfortes
Adverb
comparativemore forte
superlativemost forte
Adjective
comparativemore forte
superlativemost forte
Proper noun
pluralFortes

Plural of forte: fortes

Origin of forte

Borrowed 1640–50; earlier fort < Middle French; disyllabic pronunciation by association with Italian forte, from Latin fortis (“strong”). Doublet of fort and fortis.

Borrowed from Italian forte (“strong”).

Questions about forte

What does forte mean?
Forte means a strength or talent; a strong point.
What is forte in Hindi?
Forte in Hindi is ख़ूबी (xūbī). See Forte meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is forte?
Forte can be a noun, an adverb, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce forte?
Forte is pronounced /ˈfɔːteɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of forte?
The plural of forte is fortes.

Words near forte in the dictionary

  1. fortamine
  2. fortatter
  3. fortaught
  4. fortax
  5. fortaxes
  6. forte
  7. forteach
  8. forteaches
  9. forteaching
  10. fortean
  11. Forteana

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forte (page history and authors); Forte (page history and authors); ख़ूबी (Hindi) (page history and authors); forte (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Forte (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); forte (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); forte (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); forte (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); forte (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-forte1.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Ookap-forte.wav.

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