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font

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English has two nouns spelled font: the basin for baptismal water, from Latin fōns "spring", and the set of printing type, from French fonte "casting".[1][2][3][4]

Pronunciation

font1 basin

Etymology

It is inherited from Old English font, also spelled fant,[2][6][3] borrowed from Latin fōns (“spring, fountain, source”), which in Christian Latin also meant the water of baptism (3rd century) and the basin that held it.[4][2][7] Hoad and Ayto think it may have come into Old English through Old Irish fant or font, which would explain the Old English spelling with a.[6][1] In later use it was reinforced by Anglo-Norman funt and Old French font, used chiefly of the baptismal font.[4] The OED traces the Latin noun to the same Indo-European base as Sanskrit धन्वति (dhanvati, “runs, flows”).[4] The same Latin noun gave English fount and, through French, fountain.[1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The receptacle in a church that holds the water for baptism: Old English, in a pastoral letter on the celebration of Mass at vigils;[4] Barnhart dates the word to about 1000.[2] Etymonline calls it late Old English.[9]

Semantic evolution

The plural fonts was used in the same sense from Old English until 1877.[4][10] The sense "spring, fountain, source" is also Old English, and in modern use it is chiefly figurative, for a source that supplies something in abundance;[4][11] Etymonline calls it poetic.[9] From 1542 the word was applied to a stoup of holy water at a church entrance,[4][11] and since 1871, chiefly in North America, to the oil reservoir of a lamp.[4][11] Johnson (1755) defined it as the stone vessel for baptismal water and quoted Richard II: "No, not that name was given me at the font".[12] Between 1620 and 1815 to stand at font for someone meant to be their godparent,[4] and in 1652–59 a verb font meant to name a person or thing.[4][10]

Timeline

  • Old English – the baptismal font.[4][2]
  • Old English – a spring or fountain; later chiefly figurative.[4]
  • 1542 – a holy-water stoup.[4]
  • 1620 – to stand at font, to be a godparent (until 1815).[4]
  • 1652 – the verb, to name (until 1659).[4]
  • 1871 – the oil reservoir of a lamp (chiefly North American).[4]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A large basin, usually of stone and standing on a pedestal, that holds the water used in baptism.
  2. A receptacle for holy water.
  3. A source from which something flows in abundance: Her grandmother was a font of family stories.
  4. (archaic, poetic) A fountain or spring.
  5. The reservoir for oil in an oil lamp.

Word family

  • fontal
  • fontlet

font2 typeface

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French fonte (“a casting”),[4][2][9][7] which in French meant cast iron (1477), the melting or casting of metal (1488) and, from 1567, a set of type.[4] The French noun is formed on fondre (“to melt, cast”), either directly, by analogy with similar feminine nouns, or through an unrecorded Latin *fundita, the feminine past participle used as a noun;[4][3] the verb continues Latin fundō (“to pour, melt, cast”), also the source of found "to cast metal".[2][9][1] According to Etymonline the set was so called because all the letters in it were cast at the same time.[9] The variant fount is the usual British spelling in printing.[13][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cast iron: 1578, in an inventory of the Scottish royal wardrobe, a sense that is obsolete and rare;[4] Barnhart and Etymonline also date a casting to 1578 or the 1570s.[2][9]

Semantic evolution

The printing sense, a set of type of one size and style, is recorded from 1664 in a letter in Robert Boyle's correspondence;[4][10] Etymonline gives the 1680s and Merriam-Webster about 1688.[9][3] The general sense "the action of casting or founding" is found from 1754 to 1883.[4][10] With computer typesetting the word came to mean a set of characters of one design for composing text, in effect a typeface,[11] and Merriam-Webster also has a verb, to equip a type case with fonts.[3]

Timeline

  • 1567 – French fonte, a set of type.[4]
  • 1578 – cast iron (obsolete).[4]
  • 1664 – a set of type of one size and style;[4] 1680s in Etymonline.[9]
  • 1754 – casting or founding (until 1883).[4]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. (printing) A complete set of type of one size and style.
  2. (computing) A set of characters of one design, used to display or print text; a typeface: The report is set in a plain sans-serif font.
  3. (obsolete) Cast iron, or the act of casting metal.

References

  1. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  10. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  11. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House