- make
- make vb Make, form, shape, fashion, fabricate, manufacture, forge can all mean to cause something to come into being or existence.This is the underlying meaning of make, the most general and the most widely applicable of these terms. Make may imply the operation either of an intelligent agent or of a blind agency, and either material or immaterial existence{
make a chair
}{make a poem
}{make a choice
}{this factory makes bicycles
}{he is unable to make friends
}{God made the world
}{the spider makes webs
}{the liver makes bile
}Form adds to make the implication that the thing brought into being has a definite outline, design, or structure{a sculptor who forms hands with exquisite delicacy
}{we are ready to form a plan
}{form a federation of states
}{character is partly formed by training
}Shape, though often interchangeable with form, is much more restricted in its application because it characteristically connotes an external agent that physically or figuratively impresses a particular form upon something (as by molding, beating, carving, or cutting){the blacksmith shapes a horseshoe on his anvil
}{shape a hat on a block
}{events that shaped his career
}{every life is a work of art shaped by the man who lives it— Dickinson
}Fashion means to form, but it implies an intelligent and sometimes a purposeful agency and more or less inventive power or ingenuity{he fashioned a lamp out of an old churn
}{legislative committees often fashion strange bills out of miscellaneous suggestions
}{intelligent creatures, fashioned by the hand and in the image of an all-wise God— Hambly
}Fabricate stresses a making that unites many parts or materials into a whole{Dr. Hitchings and his associates alone have fabricated more than 500 compounds resembling one or another of the simpler chemicals out of which D. N. A. (an enormously complex substance) is fashioned in the cell— Engel
}and it usually connotes either a making according to a standardized pattern{fabricate doors, windows, and other parts of a house
}or skillfulness in construction{fabricate a good plot for a novel
}{fabricated a creed fitted to meet the sordid misery of real human life— Woolf
}Very commonly fabricate implies an imaginative making or inventing of something false{the particulars of that genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handed down or fancy fabricated— Stevenson
}{his feats of legerdemain sounded so improbable that many people considered his experiences fabricated— Heiser
}Manufacture emphasizes the making of something by labor, originally by hand but now more often by machinery. The term is applied to a making in which raw materials are used and a definite process or series of processes is followed{manufacture cloth
}{manufacture kitchen utensils
}{manufacture automobiles
}In extended use manufacture often is preferred to the preceding words when laboriousness or the knowledge of the mechanics of a process, rather than skill or ingenuity, is connoted{manufacture paintings by the dozen
}{the strain of manufacturing conversation for at least ten minutes— Fienburgh
}Forge basically suggests the operation of a smith who heats metal and beats or hammers it into shape{forge a horseshoe
}{forge a chain
}In its extended sense it carries a strong implication of devising or concocting by physical or mental effort so as to give the appearance of truth or reality{the proud have forged a lie against me: but I will keep thy precepts with my whole heart— Ps 119:69
}{whate'er I forge to feed his brainsick fits, do you uphold and maintain in your speeches— Shak.
}{however feeling may render plastic the stuff of poetry, the poem, if it be worthy of the name, is forged in the brain— Lowes
}In specific use, both legal and ordinary, forge implies the making of a counterfeit, especially by imitating the handwriting of an original or of a supposed maker; thus, one forges a document, such as a will, deed, or check, by making or signing it in imitation of another's handwriting or by making alterations in a genuine document by the same means.
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
