Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The letter m.
- n. Printing The width of a square or nearly square piece of type, used as a unit of measure for matter set in that size of type.
- n. Printing Such a measure for 12-point type; a pica.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The name of the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, usually written simply m or M.
- n. In printing, the square of any size of type. The large square here shown
is the em of the size pica; the small one , one fourth the size (one half the height and breadth), is the em of the size nonpareil, the one here used. The em is the unit of measurement in calculating the amount of type in a piece of work, as a page, a column, or a book, the standard of reckoning being 1,000; thus, this page or this book contains so many thousand, or so many thousand and hundred, ems. In the United States it is also the unit in calculating the amount of work done by a compositor, while the en is generally used for that purpose in Great Britain. - In colloquial speech, the objective plural of he, she, it: equivalent to them.
- Assimilated form of en- before labials.
- Assimilated form of en- before labials.
Wiktionary
- n. The name of the Latin script letter M/m.
- n. typography A unit of measurement equal to the height of the type in use.
- pro. neologism them (singular). Gender-neutral third-person singular object pronoun, coordinate with him and her.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Print.) The portion of a line formerly occupied by the letter
m , then a square type, used as a unit by which to measure the amount of printed matter on a page; the square of the body of a type.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a quad with a square body
- n. a linear unit (1/6 inch) used in printing
Etymologies
- The typographic em is named after the metal type for the capital M in early printing, whose body was square (the printed letter M is almost never one em in width). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Did you ever hear Reagan say, "We got social conservatives here, we got to make sure, yeah, we'll listen to 'em but then we're not gonna pay much attention to 'em.”
“Now the Internet pioneer is following an old mantra: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.”
“Creed was a gumsucker of about sixty made famous during the war for ripping out Yankees' intestines and force-feeding 'em back to 'em.”
“Historically low interest rates — banks love 'em and hate 'em.”
“As Master of the Foxhounds, Ms. Brown blew her horn; the hounds were let out of a nearby truck and bounded up a hill, Ms. Brown close behind yelling "Get 'em, get 'em, get 'em.”
“Bentley College in Massachusetts was the first in the nation to require all its students to have a laptop, but it wasnt long at all before professors started to complain they couldnt live with 'em as much as they couldnt live without 'em.”
“Ms. MAUREEN MAHONEY: They call 'em like they see 'em.”
“If you can't beat 'em, perhaps you should join 'em.”
The Wall Street Journal: How the Little Guy Can Prey on Executive Pay
“ Must be life itself that needs 'em, then, to fill some dark hole or such so the good folks don't have to touch dark, can just walk on by and never even guess at what's looking up at 'em.”
“Over the next few weeks, we'll call 'em like we see 'em.”
The Wall Street Journal: So Much Fun to Find at the Fringe Festival
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘em’.
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phrontistery - e
from phrontistery.info
eagre, earing, earwig, easement, eau-de-nil, ebberman, ebeneous, ?boulement, ebriection, ?brillade, ebrious, ebullioscope and 616 more...
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Letters
See also The Phonetic alphabet by oroboros.
aye, bee, cee, dee, e, ef, eff, gee, aitch, eye, jay, kay and 452 more...
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Time for a new list!
abrupt, erupt, rupture, sync, appropinquity, heterochromia, homochromatic, monochromatic, willy nilly, nitty gritty, kowtow, wonton and 455 more...
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Acceptable two-letter Scrabble words
aa, ab, ad, ae, ag, ah, ai, al, am, an, ar, as and 89 more...
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HTML Tags
A list of all the HTML tags.
a, abbr, acronym, address, applet, area, article, aside, audio, b, base, basefont and 108 more...
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I Live a (SOWPODS) Hardscrabble Life
aa, ad, ae, ah, ai, am, an, ar, as, at, aw, ax and 168 more...
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Me
me, mine, myself, i, my, meg, eg, jeg, mein, meine, ich, �? and 140 more...
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2 Letter Scrabble Words
All playable 2 letter Scrabble words from OSPD4
aa, ab, ad, ae, ag, ah, ai, al, am, an, ar, as and 87 more...
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Best of weirdnet
buttocks, peeler, mum, sweets, tree, auld, bowery, pynchon, horror-stricken, and, tatou, scarf and 37 more...
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Sounds Like... a Letter
a, be, bee, see, sea, gee, i, eye, jay, el, em, en and 15 more...
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Units
Oddball units of measurement that catch my fancy
See also reesetee's excellent list The Measure of Man@, apgar score, amphora, amber, aeon, animal unit, degree twaddle (°tw), degree lovibond (°l), degree macmichael..., degree dornic (°d), degree soxhlet-he..., degree therner (°th) and 32 more...
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OSPD4 two-letter words
za, ye, ya, xu, xi, wo, we, ut, us, up, un, um and 88 more...
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out of sorts
being typographical terms
foundry, typography, specimen, point, font, composition, cliché, sort, kern, lead, track, roman and 9 more...
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Words I Use Often While Speaking To P...
I work in the admissions office at Sarah Lawrence, and, as part of my job description, am required to give info sessions. These are words I often use, sometimes necessarily, sometimes not.
essentially, em, basically, unique, individual, conference, don, 'you are not a nu...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for em.
vanishedone The dictionary.reference.com version is longer, nd indicates that WordNet is referring to the printing sense: 'a quad with a square body; "since 'em quad' is hard to distinguish from 'en quad', printers sometimes called it a 'mutton quad'",' i.e. quad as in quadrat. Mar 29, 2009
bilby What's WeirdNet on about? Mar 29, 2009
misterpolly A small space in typography, just a bit longer than an "en". Feb 4, 2008