printing

Pluralprintings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The process or business of producing printed material using inked type, a press, or similar technology.

   Printing transformed how quickly knowledge could spread across Europe.

   The company outsourced its printing to a specialist firm overseas.

   Note

   The core noun, and the root of the rest: print plus the ordinary -ing suffix, the action of the verb named as a thing. Used this way it is uncountable (printing was big business; a career in printing) and usually takes no article. Once it becomes countable, as in a first printing, it has shifted to the print-run meaning. Imprintery is a rare synonym for the trade.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of print.

   The press is printing thousands of copies an hour.

   We are printing the final report before the meeting starts.

   Note

   The verb form, which shares its spelling with every noun sense of the word. As a participle it builds the progressive (the press is printing thousands). As a gerund it keeps the verb's grammar and takes a direct object (printing the report took an hour), where the trade noun would need of. It carries every sense of print, including making microchips.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   Handwritten characters formed individually rather than joined together in cursive script.

   The form asks you to fill it out in printing, not cursive.

   Her printing was so precise it almost looked typeset.

   Similarlettering

   Oppositecursive

   Note

   Handwriting in separate letters, the noun behind the instruction "print your name." Each letter is formed on its own, which sets it against cursive. Forms often ask for both: a signature, then the name printed below it so it can be read. Like the trade sense, it is uncountable. You praise someone's neat printing, never their printings.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   Printed material considered collectively, such as books, pamphlets, and other published items.

   The archive holds rare printing from the early colonial period.

   Dealers gathered to bid on antique printing and manuscripts.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   All the copies of a publication produced in one batch; the same thing as a print run.

   The first printing of the novel numbered ten thousand copies.

   Later printings corrected the typos found in the original.

   Similarimpression, run

   Note

   A collector's word: the copies that come off the press in one batch, counted and put in order as a first printing and later printings. It is not the same as an edition. One edition may run through several printings, each with its own corrections. That is why a first printing can keep typos that later ones fixed, and why collectors prize it.

Showing meanings only. Show all 5