Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The page size obtained by folding a whole sheet into four leaves.
- n. A book composed of pages of this size.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A size of book in which the leaf is one fourth of a described or implied size of paper. The sheet folded twice in cross directions makes the square quarto, or regular quarto; folded twice in the same direction makes the long quarto. A cap quarto is 7 × 8½ inches; demy quarto, 8 × 10½ inches; folio-post quarto, 8½ × 11 inches; medium quarto, 9 × 12 inches; royal quarto, 10 × 13 inches. The leaf of a quarto is understood to have a broad and short shape. Abbreviated 4 to.
- Noting the size of a book in which a sheet makes four leaves: as, a quarto volume; being of the size or shape of the leaves of a quarto; as, quarto paper; a quarto edition.
Wiktionary
- n. paper A size of paper (7.5"-10" x 10"-12.5")(190-254 x 254-312 mm). Formed by folding and cutting one of several standard sizes of paper (15"-20" x 20"-25")(381-508 x 508-635 mm) twice to form 4 leaves (eight sides).
- n. printing A book size, corresponding to the paper size.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having four leaves to the sheet; of the form or size of a quarto.
- n. Originally, a book of the size of the fourth of sheet of printing paper; a size leaves; in present usage, a book of a square or nearly square form, and usually of large size.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the size of a book whose pages are made by folding a sheet of paper twice to form four leaves
Etymologies
- From Latin quartus ("fourth") (Wiktionary)
- Short for Middle English (in) quarto, (in) the fourth part (of a sheet), from Medieval Latin (in) quārtō, from Latin, ablative of quārtus, fourth; see kwetwer- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“They form six volumes in quarto; and as Basil is the worst, so”
“Ephorus, in quarto historiarum libro, orbem terrarum inter Scythas,”
“Latin, Lipsiae, 1766, in quarto, with the learned notes of Kochler and Reiske, and some extracts of geography and natural history from”
“Shakespeare's "Pericles" exists only in a lousy quarto, which is so badly transcribed scholars assume it was done by someone jotting down the script from memory after having seen the show (the early modern equivalent of the grainy pirated videos you can buy on the subway).”
“The remainder of the first period has filled two volumes in quarto, being the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of the octavo edition.]”
“Although the book is of the size called quarto, the method of printing must have been page by page, so it is doubtful that each sheet was folded twice in the usual quarto manner, but more probable that it was printed four pages to a sheet of paper approximately 9 1/8 by 14 inches, which was folded once.”
Doctrina Christiana The first book printed in the Philippines, Manila, 1593.
“I print the book at my own expense, in quarto, which is to be sold for six shillings, with the music.”
Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732)
“In May, 1905, was celebrated at St. Louis, Mo., his twenty-fifth anniversary as bishop in the church, which proceedings of this Silver Jubilee have been published in a journal called the quarto-centennial that will do ample justice to this great hero which, with our feeble pen we are unable to do.”
“India, being used in what we should call quarto sheets, and in Farther”
“[800] Mr. Croker quotes a note by Malone to show that in the catalogue of Steevens's Library this book is described as a quarto, corio turcico foliis deauratis.”
Life Of Johnson
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘quarto’.
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Q words
Ever get stuck with the random bunch of letters and a q and not know any words? Well, maybe this will help.
quire, quais, quai, queer, quoit, quitrent, quipster, question, quest, questing, quests, quit and 208 more...
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The Bindery
A list of bookbinding terms and phrases, for assembling new or repairing/reassembling old books.
perfect binding, animal glue, spine, textblock, polyvinyl acetate, double-fan adhesi..., board, backing, rounding, bone, book cloth, pasteboard and 270 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Good ol' qu-
quag, quagga, quaff, querulous, quorum, sesquipedalian, quibble, quip, aquiline, quote, quotationist, quoter and 29 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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marginalia
exuberance, potsherds, earthbound, marcher, märchen, pastiche, transliterated, crocodile, oxbridge, jejune, publican, antithesis and 143 more...
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Rare Books
Words used in the rare book trade (of which I was once a part). For more about how such books are put together, see hernesheir's excellent The Bindery.
foxing, gilt, headband, bumped, endpaper, leaf, colophon, vellum, laid paper, boards, device, engraving and 168 more...
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spicolli's Words
terrapin, ravenous, fuck, sepulchral, garlic, suss, queer, curmudgeon, foodie, intricate, omphalos, subversion and 534 more...
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Dead Trees and Friends
Paper, things you can do with paper, and other materials you can write on.
origami, codex, ephemera, folio, vellum, octavo, quarto, thermographic, decoupage, epistolary, palimpsest
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Dictionary
dilettante, frostjack, perfunctory, impresario, paparazzi, pastiche, lollipop, Cymru, nub, bivouac, knapsack, hoodlum and 80 more...
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College Reading Words
words i find in my reading at college
empirical, caprice, telos, insofar, bedeviled, nihilism, confound, nomenclature, negate, hegemony, ebb, homophily and 35 more...
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bookish
grimoire, bildungsroman, roman a clef, chapbook, picaresque, codicology, epistolary, colophon, manuscript, memoir, incunabulum, bibliomaniac and 47 more...
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billifer's Words
phallocracy, quarto, libidinous, antihero, droog, sesquipedalian, frottage, quixotic, persnickety, agog, proclivity, logorrhea and 59 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for quarto.
johnmperry Not just any old sheet of paper.
A size of paper (7.5"-10" x 10"-12.5"). Formed by folding and cutting a standard large sheet of paper (15"-20" x 20"-25") twice to form 4 leaves (eight sides).
Paper sizes such as quarto, American quarto, octavo, 16mo etc. really only continue in North America. Most of elsewhere uses ISO paper sizes - A0, A1 etc. China of course has its own sizes. Jul 25, 2008
reesetee Also 4to. In printing and book collecting, a book of distinctly squarish shape made from printed sheets folded into quarters (giving eight pages). Also used in a general way to describe books about the size and shape of a modern standard telephone directory. Feb 24, 2008