signature
Pluralsignatures
Pluralsignatures
- 1A person's name written in their own hand, used to identify them or to show approval of an accompanying document such as a contract.
The contract required a signature from both parties before it became valid.
Forgers spend years learning to copy famous signatures.
Similarautograph
Note
The written name is where the word begins. English borrowed it from Middle French or from Medieval Latin signātūra, built on signāre and ultimately on signum, "sign." It displaced a native Old English word, handseten, literally "hand setting," which named the same thing by the act of the hand rather than by the mark it leaves. The later senses keep that idea of a sign standing for someone.
- 2Distinctive and characteristic, marking something as clearly belonging to a particular person, group, or thing.
The band opened with their signature song.
His signature move on the court is a quick spin to the left.
Similariconic
Note
An adjective made from the noun, placed before what it describes: signature dish, signature route. It is usually treated as not comparable, yet writers do compare it. Vale and Warner's Imaging the City (2001) has "the most signature of signature ephemera," and Duchscherer and Svendsen's Beyond the Bungalow (2005) has "the most signature effect." In careful prose, iconic or most characteristic avoids the objection.
- 3A distinguishing feature or product that marks out a particular person, brand, or place.
The hotel's rooftop garden has become its signature.
Bold brass sections are a signature of the composer's later works.
Similarhallmark, trademark, specialty
Note
Countable and usually possessive, as in Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince's Frommer's Rome 2001, which calls a goose-liver terrine "one of the chef's signatures." A person or place can have several. Put the word directly before another noun and it becomes the adjective, as in a signature dish. The noun stands on its own, while the adjective needs a noun to describe.
- 4Text or images appended to the end of a user's emails, forum posts, and similar messages, adding a personal touch or contact information.
Add a link to your portfolio in your email signature.
His forum signature featured a quote from his favorite poet.
Note
Online it is often clipped to sig or, more playfully, siggy. Forums tend to set limits on it, with rules such as "must not exceed three lines of text, or 600 pixels in height." It also turns up in compounds like forum signature generator. Unlike a handwritten name, it is composed once and appended to every message, so it works more like a letterhead than an act of signing.
- 5The act of signing one's name, or of producing one's written name.
The ceremony concluded with the signature of the peace accord.
A single signature sealed the merger after weeks of talks.
Similarsigning
Note
Here the word names an event rather than a mark. In official prose it often appears without an article and is followed by of and the document: "during signature of the bill," or Winifred Holtby's "her signature of unintelligible papers." That construction is the quickest way to tell it from the written name. A signature you can see is a thing, while signature of a treaty is something that happens.
- 6Data appended to a message that serves to verify it was sent by the source it claims to be from.
The software rejected the download because its signature did not match.
Email servers use digital signatures to confirm that a message has not been altered.
Note
Usually called a digital signature, it does two jobs at once. It shows who sent a message, and it shows that the message has not been altered since. It is typically generated with the sender's private key and checked with the matching public key. A failed check can mean either a wrong sender or a tampered message.
- 7Signs at the beginning of the staff indicating the key and tempo, made up of the key signature and the time signature.
The conductor reminded the players to check the signature before starting.
A change in the signature midway through the piece surprised the audience.
Note
Two signs travel together at the head of a staff. The key signature fixes the sharps or flats that apply throughout. The time signature sets the meter by giving the beats per measure and the note value of one beat, so "tempo" here really means meter rather than speed. The bare word covers both at once. When only one is meant, name it.
- 8A pattern used to match the identity of a virus, the parameter types of a method, or similar code features.
The scanner flagged the file because it matched a known malware signature.
Two methods can share a name as long as their signatures differ.
Similarfingerprint
Note
Two quite different trades share the word. In antivirus software it is a byte sequence unique to a known piece of malware, which a scanner looks for in files. In programming it is a method's name together with the number, types and order of its parameters. Change any of those and you have a different method. Context almost always shows which meaning is in play.
- 9A group of four sheets, or a multiple of four, printed so that when folded they form one section of a book.
The binder stacked each signature in order before stitching the spine.
A damaged signature meant several pages had to be reprinted.
Similargathering, section, quire
Note
Bookbinders also call it a gathering. A book's text block is made by sewing these folded sections together in order. The sheets are printed so that the pages fall into sequence only once they are folded. A misprinted or misplaced signature therefore spoils a whole run of pages, not just one leaf.
- 10A mark or sign that points to or implies something else.
Rising sea levels are a signature of a warming planet.
The blast left a signature in the rock that geologists could later read.
Similarsign, mark, hallmark, trace, indication
Note
The figure has two lives. In Richard Bentley's 1692 sermon, human souls bear "the natural and indelible signature of God." Chris Horrocks's Introducing Foucault (1997) describes the Renaissance belief that God placed a hidden signature on all things to show their affinities. That same belief lies behind the old medical sense. Modern technical prose secularizes it, and military engineers work to reduce a vehicle's noise signature.
- 11The part of a doctor's prescription that gives the patient directions for taking the medicine.
The signature on the prescription read 'one tablet twice daily with food.'
A vague signature can leave a patient unsure how often to take a drug.
Note
Prescription writing traditionally heads this part with the abbreviation Sig. It carries the dose, route and frequency in words meant for the patient, so it is the line most worth checking when a label seems unclear. Do not confuse it with the prescriber's own name at the foot of the form, which is the handwritten signature.
- 12A tuple that records the signs of the coefficients when a quadratic form is written in any of its diagonal forms.
She computed the signature of the quadratic form to classify the surface.
Two forms with the same signature are equivalent over the real numbers.
Note
The point lies in the word any. However a real quadratic form is brought to diagonal shape, the numbers of positive, negative and zero coefficients come out the same. The signature therefore belongs to the form itself, not to one way of writing it. It is usually given as a pair or triple of counts, and a form whose coefficients are all positive is called positive definite.
Less common meaning
- 13A supposed resemblance between a disease's outward signs and some physical thing, taken to point to that thing as a remedy: as the red skin of scarlet fever was matched to red cloth.
Following the doctrine, the apothecary saw a signature between the lungwort's spotted leaves and diseased lungs.
Each plant's signature, physicians once believed, revealed the malady it was meant to cure.
Note
A term from medicine's past, now obsolete, that took the word's root at its word: signature goes back to Latin signum, "sign", and here a disease's outward look was read as a sign pointing to its cure. Use it only when describing older medical thinking. In a modern sentence readers will hear the "distinguishing feature" meaning instead, so the historical sense needs its setting made clear.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
This word was borrowed from Middle French signature, or from Medieval Latin signatura, formed from the verb signare (from signum, 'sign') plus a suffix. It replaced the native Old English handseten, literally 'hand setting'.