[f. FORGE v. + -ERY.]
† 1. The action or craft of forging metal. Obs.
1609. Bible (Douay), Hab. ii. 18. Because the forger therof hath hoped in his forgerie, to make dumme idols.
1671. Milton, Samson, 131.
| Made Arms ridiculous, useless the forgery | |
| Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer’d Cuirass, | |
| Chalybean temper’d steel, and frock of mail | |
| Adamantean Proof. |
b. concr. A piece of forged work. rare.
1850. Blackie, Æschylus, II. 184.
| For on his shield, stout forgery of brass, | |
| A broad circumference of sure defence, | |
| He shows, in mockery of Cadméan Thebes, | |
| The terrible Sphynx, in gory food delighting. |
2. Invention, excogitation; fictitious invention, fiction. Now only poet. Formerly also with more reproachful sense: † Deception, lying; a fraudulent artifice, a deceit.
1583. Stanyhurst, Æneis, II. (Arb.), 46.
| Oit he gaue owt rumours, hee fabled sundrye reportes, | |
| Mee to trap in matters of state, with forgerye knauish. |
1593. Shaks., 3 Hen. VI., III. iii. 175.
| To sooth your Forgery and his. | |
| Ibid. (1599), Pass. Pilgr., 1. | |
| When my Loue sweares that she is made of truth, | |
| I doe beleeue her (though I know she lies) | |
| That she might thinke me some vntutor’d youth, | |
| Vnskilful in the worlds false forgeries. | |
| Ibid. (1602) Ham., IV. vii. 90. | |
| So farre he past my thought, | |
| That I in forgery of shapes and trickes, | |
| Come short of what he did. |
1633. P. Fletcher, Poet. Misc., 61.
| But in the day my never-slak’t desire | |
| Wilt cast to prove by welcome forgerie, | |
| That for my absence I am much the nigher. |
1781. Cowper, Retirement, 323. [Speaking of insanity].
| ’T is not, as heads that never ache suppose, | |
| Forgery of fancy, and a dream of woes. |
3. The making of a thing in fraudulent imitation of something; also, esp. the forging, counterfeiting, or falsifying of a document. For the use in Law see quot. 1769.
1593. Shaks., Lucr., 918.
| Guilty thou art of murther, and of theft, | |
| Guilty of perjurie, and subornation, | |
| Guilty of treason, forgerie, and shift, | |
| Guilty of incest that abhomination. |
1605. Rowlands, Hell’s Broke Loose, 5. Manes … published a fift Gospell of his owne forgerie, reporting himselfe to be the Holy Ghost.
1696. Prideaux, Lett. (Camden), 169. Severall very notorious acts of forgery haveing been proved against Dean, who hath indeed all along been a very raskall; and hereon he is run away.
1741. Middleton, Cicero, I. i. 40. In war he practised the same art, that he had seen so successfull to Marius, of raising a kind of enthusiasm and contempt of danger in his army, by the forgery of auspices and divine admonitions.
1769. Blackstone, Comm., IV. 245. Forgery, or the crimen falsi … ‘the fraudulent making or alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man’s right.’
1853. C. Brontë, Villette, xxxv. In their eyes, it appears, I hold the position of an unprincipled imposter. I write essays; and with deliberate forgery, sign to them my pupils’ names, and boast of them as their work.
1883. Andrew Lang, Literary Forgeries, in Contemporary Review, XLIV. Dec., 842. After the Turks took Constantinople, when the learned Greeks were scattered all over Southern Europe, when many genuine classical MSS. were recovered by the zeal of scholars, when the plays of Menander were seen once, and then lost for ever, it was natural that literary forgery should thrive.
b. The fact of being forged. rare.
1665. J. Spencer, Disc. Vulg. Proph., 83. A sign of the forgery of the whole Prophecy.
1845. Graves, Rom. Law, in Encycl. Metrop., 756/1. Marliani pretended to give the laws of Romulus from a tablet found in the Capitol, but the forgery of the Tabula Marliana is now generally admitted.
c. concr. Something forged, counterfeited, or fabricated; a spurious production.
1574. trans. Marlorat’s Apocalips, 25. Woolues which spare not the Lords flocke, but cloth themselues wyth the wooll of hys sheepe, and afterwarde destroy the sheepe themselues with their wicked forgeries.
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., II. iii. (1851), 157. Concerning therfore ecclesial jurisdiction … it had bin long agoe enroul’d to be nothing els but a pure tyrannical forgery of the Prelats.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F., II. 99. The arts of fraud were made subservient to the designs of cruelty; and a manifest forgery was attested by a person of the most sacred character.
1833. Ht. Martineau, Berkeley the Banker, I. iv. 92. He insinuated no doubts of the stability of their house; but told several people in confidence that forgeries of their notes were abroad, so well executed, that it was scarcely possible to distinguish the true notes from the false.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), V. 4, Laws, Introduction. That the longest and one of the most excellent writings bearing the name of Plato should be a forgery, even if the work were unsupported by external testimony, would be a singular phenomenon in ancient literature.
