letterpressn.
/ˈlɛtəprɛs/, U.S. /ˈlɛdərˌprɛs/ 1. Printing.
a. Material, esp. text, printed using a relief process; relief printing, as distinguished from other processes as lithography or intaglio printing.
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society > communication > printing > printed matter > [noun] > matter printed from type
letterpress1707
type-matter1892
1707 in Proposals for engraving Treat. Five Orders of Columns (end matter) (advt.) A Title Page in Red and Black, in Imitation of the Letter-Press... A Ballad entitl'd May-day Country Mirth; wherein the Wood-Cuts and Letter-Press are imitated.
a1764 R. Lloyd Puff in Poet. Wks. (1774) I. 176 Plain letter-press shall do the feat.
1824 Augusta (Georgia) Chron. 3 Mar. If Letter Press were adopted instead of Engraving, it would afford much security.
1885 A. W. Tuer Bartolozzi & his Wks. (ed. 2) v. 91 The wording of which is not only engraved in the usual manner, but repeated in letterpress.
1939 Guide Exhib. in King's Libr. (Brit. Mus.) 9 The Old Testament types are explained in two paragraphs of woodcut letterpress in the upper corners of the design.
1966 Print: Handbk. for Entrants to Printing Industry iv. 39 The basic characteristic of the lithographic process is that the printing image is flat: not raised as in letterpress or recessed as in gravure.
1999 Stamp Mag. Dec. 92/3 It is letterpress printed from a line block, such as was then widely used in newspaper illustrations.
b. The text of a book or other printed work, as distinguished from illustrations, plates, etc.Originally such text was produced by relief printing, whereas engravings, etc., were printed using other methods; therefore in some quots. this sense merges with sense 1a.
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society > communication > printing > printed matter > arrangement or appearance of printed matter > [noun] > body of printed work
matter1683
letterpress1733
1733 London Evening Post 10 May Containing the County Maps of Hertfordshire and Middlesex; the Margins of which have neatly engraven on them many curious Pieces of Antiquity found in each County, with Six Sheets of Letter-Press.
1788 F. Grose Mil. Antiq. II. Descr. of Plates p. i 1, 2, 3, 4, plates entitled Castrametation, engraved from the Harleian MS. No. 7364, and referred to in the letter press.
1828 M. R. Mitford Our Village III. Introd. 1 They who condescend to read the letter-press will have the advantage of my fair correspondent.
1861 Sat. Rev. 7 Dec. 591 William and Mary Howitt have contributed the letterpress.
1889 Spectator 14 Dec. 830 In this cartoon, and the letterpress concerning it, are commemorated [etc.].
1921 Printers' Ink 25 Aug. 96/2 Plenty of white space, two lines of italics and other letterpress..constitute the remaining features of this excellent piece of work.
1971 M. Moorman in D. Wordsworth Jrnls. 107 In 1809–10 W[ordsworth] wrote the letter-press for Wilkinson's drawings of the Lake District.
1995 L. Brake Endings of Epochs 59 The address of many of these illustrations, Beardsley's especially, and of much of the letterpress is also a function of perhaps the most castigated aspect of the new journalism, sensationalism.
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society > communication > correspondence > letter-writing > [noun] > letter-weight
letterpress1818
paperweight1822
letterweight1829
1818 Daily National Intelligencer (Washington) 3 Dec. (advt.) Bone and wood letter presses.
1848 C. A. Johns Week at Lizard 78 They [sc. pieces of rock] are often worked into..letter-presses, &c.
1876 Internat. Exhib. Official Catal. (U.S. Centennial Commission) 213/1 Letter-presses of polished granite.
3. As two words or hyphenated. A press used for making facsimile copies of letters. Now historical.Such presses were first used in the 1780s and were known as copying presses. Letters to be copied were written using a special copying ink which was then transferred to a piece of thin dampened paper by the application of pressure.
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society > communication > printing > duplicating processes > [noun] > copying-machine
rolling press1780
copying-press1785
copying-machine1803
letterpress1839
manifold letter writer1840
multigraph1878
chromograph1880
cyclostyle1883
graph1884
Roneo1901
jellygraph1919
Multilith1933
1839 Atlas (Boston, Mass.) 2 Dec. 1/3 (advt.) Letter presses. Superior French Copying Presses and Books.
1850 Student Aug. 106/2 When a copy is taken by a letter-press, the name and address are preserved in a prominent place.
1900 Sci. of Man (Sydney) 22 Sept. 142/3 Everyone of us carries on some kind of correspondence, but we do not all keep letter-presses and letter-copying books.
1926 T. Bodley in Reprints Littell's Polit. Trans. (1971) p. xviii Letter presses being then rarely used, it was the common practice for letter writers..to write first a more or less rough draft to be retained.
1989 J. Yates Control through Communication (1993) 28 A letter press reduced the labor cost, both by decreasing copying time and by allowing an office boy to do the copying once performed by a more expensive clerk.
Compounds
C1. General attributive (in sense 1).
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1745 London Evening Post 26 Nov. To contain in the whole near 100 Plates, beside Letter-Press Work.
1825 ‘J. Nicholson’ Operative Mechanic 711 Plaster of Paris..is poured over the letter-press page.
1880 Galveston (Texas) Daily News 26 Feb. The publisher prudently postpones the letter-press explanation of this formidable picture to next year's almanac.
1921 R. E. Ramsay Effective Direct Advertising xvi. 392 A ‘run’ of 50,000 headings can usually be produced by the offset process as economically as by the letterpress method.
1959 Penrose Ann. LII. 113 It was..decided to use a plate etched as shallow as was practicable and to print by ‘letterpress-offset’.
2006 Time Out N.Y. 12 Oct. 78/2 Silkscreened and embroidered tapestries, letterpress prints and a back-room arrangement of foil-stamped works.
C2.
letterpress printer n.
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1761 J. Collyer Parent's & Guardian's Directory iii. 299 Those who work for the Letter-press Printers, therefore seldom or never take apprentices.
1861 F. Nightingale Notes on Nursing (new ed.) i. 11 The places where..letter-press printers..have to work for their living.
1996 Univ. Vermont Rec. 13 Sept. 11/3 Its members include letterpress printers, bookbinders, paper makers, marblers and book dealers.
letterpress printing n.
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1755 L. Evans Geogr. Ess. 2 In the Letter-press Printing I am obliged, for want of proper Characters, to substitute gh in the Indian Words to express a certain Sound that the Italians, French and English are destitute of.
1770 London Evening Post 28 July Copper-plate and letter-press printing in general.
1840 D. Lardner Treat. Geom. 137 In letter-press printing, the types..are put together..with their faces upwards.
1921 Brit. Printer Nov. 163/1 From an economic aspect photo-litho easily holds its own when compared with letterpress printing.
2002 P. Baines & A. Haslam Type & Typogr. iv. 90/2 Other manufacturers soon brought their prices down, and henceforth hot-metal typesetting and letterpress printing rapidly declined.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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