Font

[font] /fɒnt/

noun
1.
a receptacle, usually of stone, as in a baptistery or church, containing the water used in baptism.
2.
a receptacle for holy water; stoup.
3.
a productive source:
The book is a font of useful tips for travelers.
4.
the reservoir for oil in a lamp.
5.
Archaic. a fountain.
[font] /fɒnt/
noun, Printing.
1.
a complete assortment of type of one style and size.
/fɒnt/
noun
1.

2.
the reservoir for oil in an oil lamp
3.
(archaic or poetic) a fountain or well
/fɒnt/
noun
1.
(printing) a complete set of type of one style and size Also called fount
n.

“basin,” Old English font, from Latin fons (genitive fontis) “fountain” (see fountain), especially in Medieval Latin fons baptismalis “baptismal font.”

“typeface, set of letters of a particular type,” 1680s, earlier “a casting” (1570s), from Middle French fonte “a casting,” noun use of fem. past participle of fondre “to melt” (see found (v.2)). So called because all the letters in a given set were cast at the same time.
text
A set of glyphs (images) representing the characters from some particular character set in a particular size and typeface. The image of each character may be encoded either as a bitmap (in a bitmap font) or by a higher-level description in terms of lines and areas (an outline font).
There are several different computer representations for fonts, the most widely known are Adobe Systems, Inc.’s PostScript font definitions and Apple’s TrueType. Window systems can display different fonts on the screen and print them.
[Other types of font?]
(2001-04-27)