Printers’ Lexicon

Printers have at their command a host of technical terms with which to bewilder the layperson.

Copyedited text, a process called ‘painting a proof’. Image courtesy of Chicago Manual of Style.

Following our last post on Printers’ Slang, here are some more salty typographic terms for you.

Monks and friars are two suggestive expressions, both dating from Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises (1683) and referring respectively to the dark and light patches on the printed page.

Bottle-arsed dates from the 1880s and is applied to type which is wider at the bottom that at the top. 

Bitched, type that is spoilt or ruined.

Clicker, the sub-foreman in a printing office, probably from claqueur (as most of printing’s obscure words came from the French).

Cock was used by printers when throwing up pieces of type to decide who shall, for example, pay for drinks, but if two pieces of type caught together and didn’t fall flat, that was also referred to as a cock.

Cut the line, to quit work at morning’s or day’s end.

O, an emphatic abbreviation of ‘overseer’.

Paint a proof, heavily corrected proof adorned with marks in both margins.

What’s your poll? might be the most important phrase of all: how much have you earned?

First published by Print Week as part of a series of columns entitled ‘Prints Past’.