your etymology lesson: forte

Confession: I'm a complete nerd. Word nerd, to be specific. Well, I'm a nerd about other things as well, but that's beside the point right now. I subscribe to the Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day email. I still use my dictionary and thesaurus (you know, the kind you hold in your hands) regularly. I do other wordy things that I am not willing to admit to right now. WORD NERD.

So you can imagine how nerdily excited I was when my new The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology arrived in the mail this weekend. In celebration, I will illustrate one word from said treasure every day this week. First word: Forte (page 295).

forte n. something one does very well. 1648, strong part of a sword blade; later fort strong point of a person's abilities (1682); borrowed from French fort strong point, fort, from Middle French fort FORT. The final -e was added in the 1700's, on analogy with Italian forte strong.