Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A complete set of type of one size and face.
  • noun A basin for holding baptismal water in a church.
  • noun A receptacle for holy water; a stoup.
  • noun The oil reservoir in an oil-burning lamp.
  • noun An abundant source; a fount.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A repository for the water used in baptism; now, specifically, a basin, usually of marble or other fine stone, permanently fixed within a church, to contain the water for baptism by sprinkling or immersion: distinctively called a baptismal font.
  • noun A fount; fountain; source.
  • noun A casting; the act or process of casting; founding.
  • noun A complete assortment and just apportionment of all the characters of a particular face and size of printing-type, as required for ordinary printed work.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Print.) A complete assortment of printing type of one size, including a due proportion of all the letters in the alphabet, large and small, points, accents, and whatever else is necessary for printing with that variety of types; a fount.
  • noun A fountain; a spring; a source.
  • noun A basin or stone vessel in which water is contained for baptizing.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A receptacle in a church for holy water - especially one used in baptism
  • noun A receptacle for oil in a lamp.
  • noun figuratively spring, source, fountain
  • noun figuratively A source, wellspring, fount.
  • noun typography A set of glyphs of unified design, belonging to one typeface (e.g., Helvetica), style (e.g., italic), and weight (e.g., bold). Usually representing the letters of an alphabet and its supplementary characters.
  • noun computing A computer file containing the code used to draw and compose the glyphs of one or more typographic fonts on a computer display or printer. A font file.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a specific size and style of type within a type family
  • noun bowl for baptismal water

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[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).]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin fōns, font-, from Latin, fountain.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French fonte, feminine past participle of verb fondre ("to melt").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Apparently from fount, with influence from the senses above (under etymology 1).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English font, from Latin fons ("fountain").

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Examples

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Comments

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  • Holy smokes! John changed the font while I was away.

    April 2, 2008

  • "Fonts are the clothes that words wear."

    From this article at nationalpost.com.

    July 29, 2008

  • That is sooo cute! I'm totally going to use that the next time I try to pitch a font to a client!

    July 29, 2008

  • Well, dontcry? Have you had a chance to try it? How did it work out?

    October 11, 2008

  • Interesting conversational topic, fonts are.

    May 6, 2010

  • "font" in Hungarian means: weaved

    August 7, 2012