font
nounnounverbnouncommon in dialogue
- United Kingdom//fɒnt//
- United States//fɑnt//
A receptacle in a church for holy water, especially one used in baptism.
noun
- 1
A receptacle in a church for holy water, especially one used in baptism.
She dipped her fingers in the font and crossed herself.
Blessed be God, that, at the font, / My sponsors bound me to the call / Of Christ in England to confront / The world, the flesh, the fiend and all.
In the Apostolic Age, as in Jewish times (John, iii, 23), baptism was administered without special fonts, at the seaside or in streams or pools of water (Acts, viii, 38); […]
- 2
A receptacle for lamp oil in a lamp.
Etymology
From Old English font, an early borrowing from Latin fōns, fontis (“fountain”).
noun
- 1
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.
- 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 phototypesetting, a set of patterns forming glyphs of any size, or the film they are stored on.
- 3
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
informalA typeface.
- 5
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.
They bought a license for the Gulliver font and installed that font on several machines.
- 6
informalThe design of any text.
I like the font of this logo.
Etymology
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).
verb
- 1
informalTo overlay (text) on the picture.
When figures or quotes are thought helpful to understanding a spot, they're "fonted" over the cover picture.
[…] character generator instead of an easel card to create letters on camera or telephone numbers that can run across the TV screen. The process is called fonting.
noun
- 1
figurativeA source, wellspring, fount.
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
As I am not drawing here on the font of imagination to refresh that of fact and experience, I do not suggest that the Tarot set the example of expressing Secret Doctrine in pictures and that it was followed by Hermetic writers; but it is noticeable that it is perhaps the earliest example of this art.
I am interested to fix your attention on this prospect now because unless you take it within your view and permit the full significance of it to command your thought I cannot find the right light in which to set forth the particular matter that lies at the very font of my whole thought as I address you to-day.
The Bible lays special stress on the fear of God as the font of wisdom.
Etymology
Apparently from fount, with influence from the senses above (under etymology 1).
Forms
- plural
- fonts
- past tense
- fonted
- past participle
- fonted
- present participle
- fonting
- third person singular
- fonts
font · A receptacle in a church for holy water, especially one used in baptism.
Font · # Clipping of Fontainebleau: a town near Paris, in…foo · A metasyntactic variable used to represent an unspecified…Foo · A mock deity of early science fiction fandom; a fannish ghod.