Porte
proper noun
Forms Ottoman Porte Sublime Porte
- proper noun (now historical) The Ottoman court; (hence), the government of the Ottoman empire.
Synonyms
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.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The Ottoman court; the government of the Turkish empire, officially called the Sublime Porte, from the gate (port) of the sultan's palace at which justice was administered.
Etymology [F. porte a gate, L. porta. See Port a gate.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “Porte”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details