Quote:
Originally posted by preciousjeni
The masculine pronunciation is actually "for" and the feminine is "fort." The flourish on the "e" comes from Italian.
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I don't speak French, so that's my bad, but I'm about 90% sure that we were taught that the traditional french feminization of 'strong' comes out 'fort
e' in modern english usage classes, directly to explain this phenomenon. But "forte" meaning "strongest skill" is directly an f-up using the French feminine word for "strong" and should thus be pronounced /fort/ as you spelled it above.
The flourish being italian is correct, and that's why it was only used for the musical term.
This argument is rendered pointless by the fact that, since about 1960, both American and British English has pronounced it incorrectly and thus it has become acceptable usage (according to the OED circa 1963, I'll post a link if you'd like further backup) to pronounce both terms the same.