Font

//fɒnt// name, noun, verb, slang

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    # Clipping of Fontainebleau: a town near Paris, in Seine-et-Marne department, Île-de-France, France. informal
  2. 2
    A surname
Noun
  1. 1
    A receptacle in a church for holy water, especially one used in baptism.

    "She dipped her fingers in the font and crossed herself."

  2. 2
    A set of glyphs of unified design, belonging to one typeface (e.g., Helvetica), style (e.g., italic), and weight (e.g., bold). Usually representing the letters of an alphabet and its supplementary characters.; In metal typesetting, a set of type sorts in one size.
  3. 3
    A source, wellspring, fount. figuratively

    "1824 — George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan, canto V A gaudy taste; for they are little skill'd in The arts of which these lands were once the font"

  4. 4
    bowl for baptismal water wordnet
  5. 5
    A receptacle for lamp oil in a lamp.
Show 6 more definitions
  1. 6
    A set of glyphs of unified design, belonging to one typeface (e.g., Helvetica), style (e.g., italic), and weight (e.g., bold). Usually representing the letters of an alphabet and its supplementary characters.; In phototypesetting, a set of patterns forming glyphs of any size, or the film they are stored on.
  2. 7
    a specific size and style of type within a type family wordnet
  3. 8
    A set of glyphs of unified design, belonging to one typeface (e.g., Helvetica), style (e.g., italic), and weight (e.g., bold). Usually representing the letters of an alphabet and its supplementary characters.; In digital typesetting, a set of glyphs in a single style, representing one or more alphabets or writing systems, or the computer code representing it.
  4. 9
    A typeface. informal
  5. 10
    A computer file containing the code used to draw and compose the glyphs of one or more typographic fonts on a computer display or printer. metonymically

    "They bought a license for the Gulliver font and installed that font on several machines."

  6. 11
    The design of any text. informal

    "I like the font of this logo."

Verb
  1. 1
    To overlay (text) on the picture. informal, transitive

    "When figures or quotes are thought helpful to understanding a spot, they're "fonted" over the cover picture."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Old English font, an early borrowing from Latin fōns, fontis (“fountain”).

Etymology 2

From Middle French fonte (“act or process of founding or melting; act of producing items from molten metal; cast iron; set of type”) (modern French fonte), either: * from fondre (“to melt, melt down; to smelt”), from Old French fondre, from Latin fundere, the present active infinitive of fundō (“to pour out; to make by smelting, found”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰewd- (“to pour”); or * from Late Latin *fundita, a noun use of funditus, a perfect passive participle form of Latin fundō (see above; the classical Latin form is fūsus).

Etymology 3

From Middle French fonte (“act or process of founding or melting; act of producing items from molten metal; cast iron; set of type”) (modern French fonte), either: * from fondre (“to melt, melt down; to smelt”), from Old French fondre, from Latin fundere, the present active infinitive of fundō (“to pour out; to make by smelting, found”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰewd- (“to pour”); or * from Late Latin *fundita, a noun use of funditus, a perfect passive participle form of Latin fundō (see above; the classical Latin form is fūsus).

Etymology 4

Apparently from fount, with influence from the senses above (under etymology 1).

Etymology 5

Clipping of Fontainebleau.

Etymology 6

* As a southern French and Catalan surname, from font (“spring, well”). * As an English surname, variant of Fant.

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