Other forms: forged, forging, forges
A forge is the hearth where metal is heated until it can be beaten into shape. The blacksmith's forge, light the forge, a portable forge.
The word covers both the fire itself and the workshop around it. To forge metal is to shape it by hammering while hot, which aligns the grain and makes forged parts stronger than cast ones. The second verb sense is to make a fraudulent copy: forge a signature, a forged passport — a forgery. And forge ahead means to move forward with sudden effort, from the same idea of hammering on.
1nounforgeThe hearth or workshop where metal is heated and beaten.
“The forge has been cold since the last smith died.”
2verbshapeTo shape metal by heating and hammering it.
“The gates were forged by hand over about two years.”
3verbfraudulentTo make a fraudulent copy of something.
“He forged the signature well enough to fool a bank.”
forge is a workshop, or a way of shaping.
The Latin behind it is a worker in hard metal. The forge is the fire he keeps, and the metal goes soft in it.
hooks ontometal
Latin fabrica meant a workshop, from faber, a craftsman — the same root as fabric and fabricate. Fabricating a story and forging a signature are the same metaphor made twice from the same Latin word.
Latin
fabrica — workshop
Old French
forge
Middle English
forge
English, today
forge
Built from
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 frp favèrge. a doublet of fabric and fabrica. Partially displaced smithy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA