In a Word: Jewels of the Typesetters’ Lexicon

Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.

Every discipline and specialty has its own (sometimes odd and unexpected) inside terms — its own jargon. Some even have their own systems of measurement: Farriers, equine specialists, and cowboys, for instance, measure horse height in hands; and people online seem to love the multisyllabic names for the different sizes of wine bottles, from the 187.5 mL piccolo to the 30 L Melchizedek.

Printers and typesetters, too, have their own measuring system, with its own vocabulary. In the heyday of moveable type, printers like Benjamin Franklin had a long list of interesting terms to designate particular letter sizes, as you’ll see below.

Though many of these terms were still in use well into the 20th century by typesetters using Linotype machines, modern printing jargon isn’t so colorful. Instead of words, designers rely on more precise numbers. However, fonts and other print-related elements are still measured in picas and points, units of measure that extend the pattern of the Imperial system of measurement of subdividing lengths into multiples of 3: A yard is 3 feet, a foot is 12 inches, an inch is 6 picas, and a pica is 12 points.

In today’s computer systems, font size can be changed from a simple drop-down menu. But in the days of printing presses and moveable type, changing a font size meant using an entirely different set of slugs from a different wooden case. Typesetters needed to be able to refer to various sizes more quickly and easily, so over time a vocabulary developed for these font sizes. But rather than coining a mass of neologisms, they borrowed words that already existed.

The following type sizes — listed from smallest to largest — come from Charles Thomas Jacobi’s The Printers’ Vocabulary, published in 1888.

Minnikin

Also called excelsior, the smallest font size measures about 1/4 of a pica high, or 3 points — quite tiny indeed. Minnikin (spelled elsewhere as minikin) is presumably related to the word minikin, “a small or dainty creature,” whose name ultimately derives from the Middle Dutch minne “beloved.”

Brilliant

Jacobi doesn’t indicate a specific size for a brilliant font, only that it falls between minnikin and gem. It’s approximately a 4-point font.

Gem

Again Jacobi only indicates where this size falls in the rankings, not a specific measurement. The gem is only the first size to pull from the language of jewelry for its name. I think it extends a wonderful metaphor: Thesaurus traces to a Greek word meaning “treasure”; the words in a thesaurus, then, might be considered like jewelry in a treasure chest, and individual letters are the precious stones that make those jewels valuable.

Diamond

One size larger than a gem font is a diamond font, which, at approximately 4.5 points, is equal to half a bourgeois.

Pearl

The 5-point pearl font is still pretty tiny, measuring 1/2 a long primer font.

Ruby

Also called agate, a ruby font is about 5.5 points high, half a small pica.

Nonpareil

A nonpareil font is exactly half the size of a pica, making it 6 points or 1/12 of an inch high. Nonpareil is French for “unequaled.”

Emerald

At about 6.5 points, emerald, also called minionette, is half the size of an English font.

Minion

Just a little larger than the minionette, a minion font is about 7 points. When the word began appearing in English texts around 1500, minion meant “darling, beloved,” from the Old French mignon “favorite, darling.” A century later, people began using the term disparagingly, leading to the modern sense of the word as a servant or underling.

Brevier

A brevier font was approximately 8 points high — the smallest font size that appears by default in Microsoft Word’s font size drop-down menu. This font size probably gets its name from the fact that it was commonly used to print breviaries, religious books of prayers or hymns. Breviary traces to the Latin verb breviare “to shorten,” from brevis “short.”

Bourgeois

The French word bourgeois was, in Old French, more like borjois and came from the word borc “town or village”; this, in turn, is related to a Frankish word that looks more familiar to English speakers: burg. Bourgeois is literally “town dweller,” as opposed to a peasant. A bourgeois font is about 9 points high, or 1/8 of an inch.

Long primer

A long primer is twice the size of a pearl font, so about 10 points, and now we’re starting to get into the sizes used in newspaper copy. Like brevier, long primer might be linked to the type of work it was used for: A primer was a layperson’s prayer book, from the Latin primus “first” on the notion that would be a person’s first book.

Small Pica

At about 11 points, a small pica is just a single point smaller than a pica, giving typesetters just that tiniest bit of extra space to cram in more copy without the letters being notably smaller.

Pica

The pica font is 1/6 of an inch tall, twice the size of a nonpareil. The pica was and still is a standard unit of measure for printing and page layout.

You’ll notice that I’ve hedged all the numerical sizes for these fonts with words like about and approximately. Historically, a pica font was one that would yield six lines of type per inch, but that also included the space between lines of text. Over time, the pica as a unit of measure was simplified to 1/6 of an inch.

The history of the word pica is a bit odd, and not entirely certain. The word pica in Latin means “magpie.” A book of the rules for calculating holy days in the Church of England, on close-printed pages, gave the pages a pied look — with splotches of black and white, like a magpie. The resemblance of those pages to magpies is probably why that book of rules was also called pica. The pica unit of measure likely got its name not because it was the font size used for printing the pica book but because the pica became “the rule” — in the measurement sense — for printers.

Bonus etymology: The magpie was known for its omnivorous appetite — it would eat practically anything. This characteristic of indiscriminate eating found its way into medical terminology: the Latin pica is also the name for a pathological craving to eat nonfood items.

English

This word that we all recognize also indicates a font size of about 14 points, twice the size of an emerald font. I have to wonder if this is a subtle reference to (or more likely a dig at) Ireland, aka “The Emerald Isle,” as if to imply that the English are twice as great as the Irish. I have no data to back up that theory, though.

Great Primer

At around 18 points, great primer fonts are twice the size of bourgeois fonts. Apparently, though we have both long primer and great primer, there’s no font size simply called primer.

Paragon

The paragon font traces its name to the Greek parakonan “to sharpen or whet” (akone means “whetstone”). This developed into the Italian paragone, originally “a touchstone for testing gold,” which found its way through French and into English in the early 1500s to mean “a model or pattern of excellence or perfection.” I don’t know if a paragon font is all that, but at 20 points, it’s certainly more readable than the smaller sizes.

Double Pica

Double pica isn’t, as you might think, two picas in size — it’s actually twice the size of a small pica, making it about 22 points. Jacobi didn’t, but some more modern printers specified both double small pica (22 points) and double pica (24 points) sizes; it’s certainly more logical, but the English language isn’t known for its logic.

Trafalgar

A Trafalgar font is slightly larger than four small picas, so about 45 points or 5/8 inches high.

Canon

A canon is equal to 4 picas, or 3/4 of an inch. I wrote about the etymology of canon (and cannon) in an earlier column.

It has been common for centuries for printers to enlarge (and sometimes decorate) the first letter of a chapter or section. Even today, this oversized letter is called a drop cap — a capital letter that drops below its baseline, sometimes substantially. Typesetters, though, referred to these larger letter slugs as two-line versions of other font sizes, because — and here logic prevailed — they were twice the size and took up twice as much vertical space as their regular-sized, one-line counterparts.

The common two-line sizes listed in The Printers’ Vocabulary are

• Two-line pica
• Two-line English
• Two-line great primer
• Two-line double pica

On a historical note, one important source for Jacobi’s dictionary entries was Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises, Vol. II, published in 1683. Jacobi points out that not all of these sizes appeared in this earlier text; Moxon included pearl, nonpareil, brevier, long primer, small pica, pica, English, great primer, double pica, two-line English, and canon. Presumably the additional 13 sizes are an indication of how far typesetting advanced over the two intervening centuries.