Greeking
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Nonsense text or graphics inserted into a document as a placeholder to create a dummy layout, or to demonstrate a type font; the practice of using such placeholder text or graphics. uncountable
"If text gets smaller than this value, [Adobe] Illustrator shows the text blocks as gray bars, an operation called greeking. Both type size and view size figure into the equation, so that 6-point type greeks at 100-percent view size and 12-point type greeks at 50 percent. Greeking speeds the screen display because gray bars are easier to draw than individual characters."
- 1 present participle and gerund of greek. form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 2 present participle and gerund of Greek form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"If text gets smaller than this value, [Adobe] Illustrator shows the text blocks as gray bars, an operation called greeking. Both type size and view size figure into the equation, so that 6-point type greeks at 100-percent view size and 12-point type greeks at 50 percent. Greeking speeds the screen display because gray bars are easier to draw than individual characters."
Etymology
From greek + -ing.
Related phrases
More for "greeking"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.