Word.ws English Dictionary

fortis

/ˈfɔː(ɹ)tɪs/

fortis adjective: relatively strongly articulated, hence voiceless and possibly aspirated; especially as compared to the others of a group of homorganic consonants.

Adjective

fortis (not comparable)

  1. Relatively strongly articulated, hence voiceless and possibly aspirated; especially as compared to the others of a group of homorganic consonants.
    • Unaspirated [p] is fortis in French, the corresponding lenis consonant being [b]. The same sound is lenis in Danish, the corresponding fortis consonant being [pʰ].
    • All vowels, whether short or complex, are relatively shorter when followed by a fortis consonant and relatively longer when followed by a lenis one or, for those where this is possible, when no consonant follows (in free or unchecked syllables).2004, Stephan Gramley, Michael Pätzold, A Survey of Modern English, Routledge, →ISBN, page 80
    Synonyms:
    tense
    Antonyms:
    lenis

Noun

fortis (plural fortes)

  1. A fortis consonant.

Proper noun capitalized: Fortis

Fortis

  1. (plural) plural of Forti

Synonyms of fortis

Antonyms

Forms of fortis

pluralfortes

Origin of fortis

Learned borrowing from Latin fortis (“strong”). Doublet of fort and forte.

Words formed from fortis

Phrases with fortis

Questions about fortis

What does fortis mean?
Fortis means relatively strongly articulated, hence voiceless and possibly aspirated; especially as compared to the others of a group of homorganic consonants.
What part of speech is fortis?
Fortis can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce fortis?
Fortis is pronounced /ˈfɔː(ɹ)tɪs/.

Words near fortis in the dictionary

  1. Fortini
  2. Fortinis
  3. Fortino
  4. Fortinos
  5. fortins
  6. fortis
  7. Fortis Creek
  8. Fortisan
  9. fortissimi
  10. fortissimo
  11. fortissimos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fortis (page history and authors); Fortis (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:

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

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