Particle physics

The ninth entry is l’interaction forte, and the adjective at the end of it leads a busier life outside the laboratory than inside it. In the physics it simply ranks a force: the strong interaction against the weak one on the next line. In ordinary French, fort also turns into a noun and into a handful of fixed phrases that no word-for-word reading survives. Ce n’est pas mon fort is « it is not my strong point », and English quietly took that very noun over as « a forte », picking up a final e the French never had. C’est plus fort que moi concedes defeat to nobody: it means « I cannot help it ». Au plus fort de la crise is at the height of the crisis, the point of greatest intensity. Fort de son expérience describes somebody acting on the strength of what they already know, and drawing confidence from it. And placed before an adjective, fort is simply a formal « very »: c’est fort possible means « that is quite possible ». The force binds quarks; the word binds idioms, and each one must be learnt whole.