Porte

• Ottoman Porte
• Sublime Porte

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

Porte

1. (now historical) The Ottoman court; (hence), the government of the Ottoman empire. [from 15th c.]
   • 1793, Hester Piozzi, Thraliana, 20 February:

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

   • 1988, Christina Pribićević-Zorić, translating Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars, Vintage 1989, p. 24:

     A hired diplomat in Edirne and to the Porte in Constantinople, a military commander in the Austro-Turkish wars, a polyhistor and a learned man.

   • 2015, Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, Penguin 2016, p. 19:

     The Ottoman defenders in Edirne (ancient Adrianople, a city in modern Turkey near Greece and Bulgaria) were left surrounded and under siege when the Porte sued for an armistice in early December 1912.

• -trope, Perot, Petro, opter, petro, petro-, ptero-, repot, tepor, toper, trope

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Porte

1. nominative/accusative/genitive plural of Port (“harbor”)