Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

θ	thin	ð	this	ʃ	she	ʒ	measure
tʃ	church	dʒ	judge	ŋ	sing	j	yes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

-s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
-ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
-ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

forties

noun, adjective, proper noun

Also a form of forty

Forms 'forties 1940s '40s 40s

noun The fifth decade of a century: the 1840s, 1940s, 2040s, etc. “My ma was born in the forties and my pa was born in the seventies.”
noun The decade of one's life from age 40 through age 49. “They're both in their forties.”
noun (temperature, rates, plural only) The range between 40 and 49. “What to wear when the weather is in the forties really depends on whether you're talking Fahrenheit or Celsius.”
adjective From or evoking the 41st through 50th years of a century (chiefly the 1940s). “Two forties aircraft sat forgotten in the hangar until they were rediscovered by two trespassing teens.”
proper noun A sea area, in the northern part of the North Sea, where the depth of water is consistently forty fathoms

Synonyms

From forties, due to the dpth of the area.

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “forties”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details