Print

How to spell print

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce print

What does print mean?

1. verbTo produce text or images on paper or another surface using a machine or press.
2. nounA mark, impression, or reproduced image, such as a photograph, pattern, or piece of printed text.

Print in a sentence

• verb

  The office needs to print a hundred copies of the report by noon.

• noun

  She framed a glossy print of the harbour for the hallway.

• verb

  Please print your boarding pass before you leave for the airport.

• noun

  The contract terms are buried in the small print at the bottom.

Where does print come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word print traces back to the Latin verb premere, meaning 'to press', whose past participle pressus also gives us 'press', 'pressure', and 'impression'. In Old French this developed into preinte, the feminine past participle of preindre, meaning 'a thing pressed' or 'an impression left behind'. English borrowed it during the 1200s and 1300s, first for any mark or imprint made by pressing one surface onto another, such as a footprint in soft ground. When mechanical typesetting arrived in the 1400s, the word was the obvious choice for the marks pressed onto paper by inked type, and from there it grew to cover photographs, patterned cloth, and the act of producing such marks. The single short vowel and the lack of any silent letters make print one of the few members of the premere family that stayed simple to spell.

How the word is built

• print (from Latin premere, 'to press'); a single unanalysable root in modern English with no separable affixes