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''forge'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250827013621-00-⌔

forge - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

forge (plural forges)

  • A furnace or hearth where metals are heated prior to hammering them into shape.
    • ✤ Close to the hump-backed bridge on the lane leading into the Hambleden Valley is a mid-19th-century smithy, its inside walls hung with tools of the blacksmith’s trade, though decorative wrought-ironwork is now the main product from its glowing forge.1
  • A workshop in which metals are shaped by heating and hammering them.
    • ✤ Synonyms: smithy, smithery
  • The act of beating or working iron or steel.
    • ✤ In the greater bodies the forge was easy.2
  • (computing) A web-based collaborative platform for developing and sharing software.
    • ✤ Synonym: software forge
    • ✤ If the project uses a forge like GitLab, GitHub, or BitBucket, it can be very easy to search all past commit logs […]3

Verb

forge (third-person singular simple present forges, present participle forging, simple past and past participle forged)

  • (metallurgy, metalworking) To shape a metal by heating and hammering.
    • ✤ On Mars’s armor forged for proof eterne4
    • ✤ Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out. […]. Ikey the blacksmith had forged us a spearhead after a sketch from a picture of a Greek warrior; and a rake-handle served as a shaft.5
  • To form or create with concerted effort.
    • ✤ Synonym: carve out
    • ✤ The politician’s recent actions are an effort to forge a relationship with undecided voters.
    • ✤ Those names that the schools forged, and put into the mouth of scholars, could never get admittance into common use.6
    • ✤ O purblind race of miserable men,/How many among us at this very hour/Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves./By taking true for false, or false for true.7
    • ✤ In The Last Guardian, a kidnapped boy forges an uneasy relationship with a frightening beast in order to survive.8
  • To create a forgery of; to make a counterfeit item of; to copy or imitate unlawfully.
    • ✤ He had to forge his ex-wife’s signature. The jury learned the documents had been forged.
  • To make falsely; to produce, as that which is untrue or not genuine; to fabricate.
    • ✤ That paltry story is untrue,/And forged to cheat such gulls as you.9

Verb

forge (third-person singular simple present forges, present participle forging, simple past and past participle forged)

  • (often as forge ahead) To move forward heavily and slowly (originally as a ship); to advance gradually but steadily; to proceed towards a goal in the face of resistance or difficulty.
    • ✤ The party of explorers forged through the thick underbrush.
    • ✤ We decided to forge ahead with our plans even though our biggest underwriter backed out.
    • ✤ And off she [a ship] forged without a shock.10
  • (sometimes as forge ahead) To advance, move or act with an abrupt increase in speed or energy.
    • ✤ With seconds left in the race, the runner forged into first place.
    • ✤ Let’s forge past that runner on the inside.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /fɔːd͡ʒ/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (General American) IPA: /fɔɹd͡ʒ/
  • (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA: /fo(ː)ɹd͡ʒ/
  • (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA: /foəd͡ʒ/
  • Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)dʒ

Etymology 1

From Middle English forge, from Old French forge, early Old French faverge, from Latin fabrica (“workshop”), from faber (“workman in hard materials, smith”) (genitive fabri). Cognate with Franco-Provençal favèrge. Doublet of fabric and fabrica. Partially displaced English smithy.

  • Computing sense perhaps derived from the early SourceForge service, launched in 1999.

Etymology 2

From Middle English forgen, from Anglo-Norman forger and Old French forgier, from Latin fabrico (“to frame, construct, build”). Doublet of fabricate.

Etymology 3

Make way, move ahead, most likely an alteration of force, but perhaps from forge (n.), via notion of steady hammering at something. Originally nautical, in reference to vessels.

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 214, about Hambleden: ↩

  2. 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis[Bacon], “”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p] rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC: ↩

  3. 2018, V. M. Brasseur, Forge Your Future with Open Source, The Pragmatic Bookshelf, →ISBN: ↩

  4. c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii], line 451: ↩

  5. 1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter II, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC: ↩

  6. 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC: ↩

  7. 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, pages 45–46: ↩

  8. 2019 May 8, Jon Bailes, “Save yourself! The video games casting us as helpless children”, in The Guardian ‎: ↩

  9. 1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1905, →OCLC: ↩

  10. 1849, Thomas De Quincey, “Dream-Fugue”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine: ↩

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