Definitions

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

  • noun A fountain.
  • noun One that initiates or dispenses; a source.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A spring of water; a fountain.
  • noun A source; a fountainhead.
  • noun Same as font, 2.

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

  • noun (Print.) A font.
  • noun A fountain.

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

  • noun something from which water flows
  • noun a device from which poultry may drink
  • noun figuratively that from which something flows or proceeds
  • noun typography, UK, dated A typographic font.

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 a plumbing fixture that provides a flow of water

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old English and Old French font, both from Latin fōns, font-.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin fons

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French fonte, feminine past participle of verb fondre: to melt.

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Examples

  • There are three very old images, one at the front, and two on the side; the baptismal fount is surrounded by turned wood, and the choral section has a 20th Century organ.

    The Meseta Purepecha 2008

  • There are three very old images, one at the front, and two on the side; the baptismal fount is surrounded by turned wood, and the choral section has a 20th Century organ.

    The Meseta Purepecha 2008

  • I have no helper76 but my tears that ever flow in fount,

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • The rite of my infancy was performed as became a soldier's son; my fount was my father's helmet, and the first pap I sucked lay on the point of his sword.

    The Scottish Chiefs 1875

  • Of the Devanagari character we have also cast an entire new fount, which is esteemed the most beautiful of the kind in India.

    Life of William Carey George Smith 1876

  • Holytaco is 4chan Lite (also known as a fount of puerile, sexist low-brow humor), but this is one of the few gems I've ever seen come out of it.

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2009

  • Prof. Adler seems to think that the doctrine of evolution explains only the physical descent of man; for the genesis of the spiritual man, he looks for some supernatural "fount" in the skies.

    The Truth about Jesus : Is He a Myth? 1901

  • The two were used interchangeably as early as the 1920s, although some whiskered English traditionalists will still insist on "fount" in an elitist way, in the hope that it will stretch their authenticity all the way back to Caxton, the great British printer of Chaucer.

    The Guardian World News Simon Garfield 2010

  • The two were used interchangeably as early as the 1920s, although some whiskered English traditionalists will still insist on "fount" in an elitist way, in the hope that it will stretch their authenticity all the way back to Caxton, the great British printer of Chaucer.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • The two were used interchangeably as early as the 1920s, although some whiskered English traditionalists will still insist on "fount" in an elitist way, in the hope that it will stretch their authenticity all the way back to Caxton, the great British printer of Chaucer.

    The Guardian World News Simon Garfield 2010

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