printer
Pluralprinters
- 1A device, usually connected to a computer, that prints text or images onto paper, or a similar machine that produces three-dimensional objects.
The office printer jammed again just before the deadline.
Modern printers can produce three-dimensional models from a design file.
Note
Before computers, the machine sense belonged to the telegraph. The Mechanics' Magazine of 1872 discusses the Hughes type printer on main circuits, and Telegraph Age in 1903 describes an operator controlling "the receiving printer at the distant station." The same -er that made the press operator a person here names a machine, and the word now stretches to devices that print solid objects rather than pages.
- 2The operator of a printing press or the owner of a printing business; also, by extension, the printing business itself.
The author thanked the printer who set the first edition by hand.
Several local printers competed for the magazine contract.
Note
The trade's own name for itself. In 1545 Thomas Berthelet signed a colophon as "printer to the kynges highnes," and the Star Chamber's 1637 decree on printing ranked apprentices by the standing of each Master Printer. The metonymic use lives on in a set phrase: a book that is "at the printers" is being produced, and the word names the firm rather than any one person at the press.
- 3A person who creates prints, such as etchings, engravings, woodcuts, or lithographs, by transferring ink from a prepared surface to paper.
The printer inked the copper plate and pressed a sheet of paper over it.
Many printers number each impression to show how many copies exist.
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Practice
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Origin
Formed from "print" combined with the suffix "-er."