Imagine my suprise this morning when I read that forte, meaning “something in which one excels,” is properly pronounced with a single syllable, as ‘fort.’ As you know, I am irked when double-syllabled words are pronounced with a single syllable; in this case, it appears that the opposite is true. I had always assumed that the musical forte, meaning ‘loud,’ was pronounced the same as the ‘has great talent’ forte. I was mistaken: the adjective/adverb (musical) form hails from Italian, whereas the noun form emigrated from French. Fear not: according to Dictionary.com, the two-syllabled elocution is fast becoming the norm. The editors go so far as to warn that the speaker risks listener confusion if the single-syllable rendering is used. Ah, progress.