font1

[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.
Origin
before 1000; Middle English; Old English font, fant < Latin font- (stem of fōns) baptismal font, spring, fountain

font2

[font] /fɒnt/
noun, Printing.
1.
a complete assortment of type of one style and size.
Also, British, fount.
Origin
1570-80; < Middle French fonte < Vulgar Latin *funditus a pouring, molding, casting, verbal noun from Latin fundere to pour. See found3
Examples from the web for font
  • They weigh up to a ton or more and have dagger-type tusks in font of their face.
  • Nonetheless, wood type is rather arcane in today's digital font world.
  • If you want to make the design on the page simpler, take away one of these: a type of font, a color or an image.
  • When you tap the icon, a list of four font sizes appears.
  • Adjusting font size, set contrast, and lock orientation.
  • From the droplets in a baptismal font to the scattering of ashes on a holy river, water blesses our lives.
  • Professional font creators pooh poohed this system, although a lot of them used it themselves.
  • To increase and decrease the font size, pinch and zoom with two fingers on an article screen.
  • Size, font and even line spacing can now be tweaked.
  • Because they haven't yet been, or seen someone being, fired for having a brief bounced because it was in the wrong size font.
British Dictionary definitions for font

font1

/fɒnt/
noun
1.
  1. a large bowl for baptismal water, usually mounted on a pedestal
  2. a receptacle for holy water
2.
the reservoir for oil in an oil lamp
3.
(archaic or poetic) a fountain or well
Derived Forms
fontal, adjective
Word Origin
Old English, from Church Latin fons, from Latin: fountain

font2

/fɒnt/
noun
1.
(printing) a complete set of type of one style and size Also called fount
Word Origin
C16: from Old French fonte a founding, casting, from Vulgar Latin funditus (unattested) a casting, from Latin fundere to melt; see found³
Word Origin and History for font
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.

font in Technology
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)