"black-letter" meaning in English

See black-letter in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

Head templates: {{head|en|adjective|head=black-letter}} black-letter
  1. (printing) Written or printed in black letter. Categories (topical): Printing
    Sense id: en-black-letter-en-adj-xA2OzsDt Topics: media, printing, publishing
  2. (figurative) Given to the study of books in black letter; old-fashioned. Tags: figuratively
    Sense id: en-black-letter-en-adj-WHYHKmmM Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 4 52 44
  3. Of or relating to the days in the calendar not marked with red letters as saints' days; unlucky; inauspicious.
    Sense id: en-black-letter-en-adj-rVme43mW Categories (other): English terms with collocations, English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 4 52 44

Download JSON data for black-letter meaning in English (2.4kB)

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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "senses": [
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          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Printing",
          "orig": "en:Printing",
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            "Industries",
            "Business",
            "Economics",
            "Society",
            "Social sciences",
            "All topics",
            "Sciences",
            "Fundamental"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "a black-letter manuscript or book",
          "type": "example"
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        {
          "ref": "1880, William Blades, The Enemies of Books, page 54",
          "text": "In the summer of 1877, a gentleman with whom I was well acquainted, took lodgings in Preston-street, Brighton. The morning after his arrival, he found in the W.C. some leaves of an old black-letter book.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Written or printed in black letter."
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      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(printing) Written or printed in black letter."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "media",
        "printing",
        "publishing"
      ]
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          "ref": "1833, James Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald",
          "text": "Kemble, a black-letter man!",
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      ],
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        "Given to the study of books in black letter; old-fashioned."
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        "Of or relating to the days in the calendar not marked with red letters as saints' days; unlucky; inauspicious."
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      "id": "en-black-letter-en-adj-rVme43mW",
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          "type": "quotation"
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      "glosses": [
        "Written or printed in black letter."
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        "(printing) Written or printed in black letter."
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        "printing",
        "publishing"
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        "Given to the study of books in black letter; old-fashioned."
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        "Of or relating to the days in the calendar not marked with red letters as saints' days; unlucky; inauspicious."
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}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.