forger

forger — noun

1. a person who creates false copies of valuable objects such as money, official do

1.nounB2
Definition

a person who creates false copies of valuable objects such as money, official documents, or works of art, intending to deceive people into believing the copies are real.

Example

The police arrested a forger who had been making fake passports for years.

passive: arrested + forger — common crime-news pattern

Art experts at the museum discovered that Adina was a skilled forger.

Common collocations
  • skilled forger
  • professional forger
  • convicted forger
  • document forger
  • passport forger
Synonyms
  • counterfeiter

    more specific to fake money or official currency

  • faker

    less formal and can also mean someone who pretends to have skills they lack

  • fraudster

    broader term for anyone who commits fraud, not limited to making physical fakes

Antonyms
  • authenticator

    a person who checks whether something is real or fake

Grammar Patterns

forger + of + [fake items]

Usage Note

Often appears in news reports about crime. The person or institution that is deceived is usually a buyer, a museum, a bank, or a government agency.

Common Mistakes

The painting is a forger.
The painting is a forgery.
A forger is the person who makes the fake; the fake object itself is called a forgery.

2. a worker who heats metal until it is soft and then hammers it into shape, using

2.nounC1
Definition

a worker who heats metal until it is soft and then hammers it into shape, using a furnace and anvil to make tools, horseshoes, decorative items, or other useful objects.

Example

Nikhil works as a forger, shaping red-hot iron into gates and railings.

works as + forger — occupation pattern

The old forger taught his son to hammer heated steel into sharp blades.

Common collocations
  • village forger
  • master forger
  • traditional forger
Synonyms
  • blacksmith

    the most common modern term for someone who works with iron and steel

  • smith

    shorter form, often used in compounds such as goldsmith or silversmith

  • metalworker

    broader term covering any kind of metal shaping, not just forging

Usage Note

This sense is less common in modern everyday speech; blacksmith is the more widely used term. Forger survives mainly in historical writing and discussions of traditional crafts.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

A forger creates copies of valuable objects such as money, documents, or artworks with the intent to deceive. A counterfeiter is a narrower type of forger who specifically focuses on fake money or official currency — the term is almost always used in a financial-crime context. A fraudster is a broader term for anyone who commits fraud by deception, which may or may not involve making physical fakes; someone who runs an investment scam is a fraudster, not a forger. A faker is more informal and can describe someone who pretends to have skills, knowledge, or qualities they do not actually possess, rather than someone who creates fake objects. To illustrate: 'The forger copied a Van Gogh so well that museum experts were convinced it was real,' but 'The fraudster convinced investors to put money into a company that did not exist.'

forger ↗counterfeiterfraudsterfaker ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

Phrases

  • caught forger
  • exposed forger
  • convicted forger

Prepositions

Etymology

LatinOld FrenchEnglish

The word 'forger' comes from the verb 'forge', which originally meant 'to shape metal by heating and hammering'. That verb entered English through Old French 'forgier', which came from Latin 'fabricare' meaning 'to make, build, or construct'. The criminal sense — making a false document — developed in the 1500s by analogy: a forger 'shapes' or 'crafts' something, but in this case a fake rather than a genuine object. Both senses of the word share the core idea of shaping or creating, though one refers to a traditional craft and the other to illegal deception.