[font] 
| 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 1 (fŏnt) n.
[Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin fōns, font-, from Latin, fountain.] font'al (fŏn'tl) adj. |
| font 2 (fŏnt) n. Printing A complete set of type of one size and face. [French fonte, casting, from Old French (from Vulgar Latin *fundita, from Late Latin, feminine of *funditus, past participle of Latin fundere, to pour forth; see fondant) or from Old French fondre, to melt (from Latin fundere).] |
font 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)