Fort-da

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The (repeated) disappearance and reappearance of an object, especially as a source of pleasure in child play.

    "The death loop represents a limit of the game system as well as the pleasures associated with fort-da present in the playing of digital games."

Example

More examples

"The death loop represents a limit of the game system as well as the pleasures associated with fort-da present in the playing of digital games."

Etymology

Borrowed from German fort (“gone”) and da (“there”), exclamations that Sigmund Freud heard his grandson utter while playing, described in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.