Porte

name

name ·1 syllable ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    the Ottoman court in Constantinople wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    The Ottoman court; (hence), the government of the Ottoman empire. historical

    "Another odd Combination: 'tis now confidently asserted that the Ottoman Porte enters into a League offensive & defensive with France […]."

Example

More examples

"Another odd Combination: 'tis now confidently asserted that the Ottoman Porte enters into a League offensive & defensive with France […]."

Etymology

From Middle French porte (“gate”), ultimately after Ottoman Turkish باب عالی (Bâb-ı Âli, “Exalted Gate”), from Arabic بَاب (bāb, “gate”) and عَالِيّ (ʕāliyy, “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.

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