Porte

See also: porte, porté, and portë

English

Alternative forms

• Ottoman Porte
• Sublime Porte

Etymology

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle French porte (“gate”), ultimately after Ottoman Turkish باب عالی (Bâb-ı Âli, “Exalted Gate”), from Arabic باب (bāb, “gate”) and عالي (ʿālī, “high, exalted”), a synecdoche for the Ottoman government originally referring to the outer gate of the sultan's Topkapı palace at which justice was administered, and later to the gate of the palace of the grand vizier.

Proper noun

Porte

1. (now historical) The Ottoman court; (hence), the government of the Ottoman empire. [from 15th c.]
   • 1988, Christina Pribićević-Zorić, translating Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars, Vintage 1989, p. 24:

     A hired diplomat in Edirne and to the Porte in Constantinople, a military commander in the Austro-Turkish wars, a polyhistor and a learned man.

   • 2015, Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, Penguin 2016, p. 19:

     The Ottoman defenders in Edirne (ancient Adrianople, a city in modern Turkey near Greece and Bulgaria) were left surrounded and under siege when the Porte sued for an armistice in early December 1912.

Anagrams

• -trope, Perot, Petro, opter, petro, petro-, ptero-, repot, tepor, toper, trope

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German

Noun

Porte

1. plural of Port (“harbor”)