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A lettered board, or other conspicuous notice, placed upon or before a building, room, shop, or office to advertise the business there transacted, or the name of the person or firm carrying it on; a publicly displayed token or notice. The shops were, therefore, distinguished by painted signs, which gave a gay and grote…

t the beginning of the staff, immediately after the clef, affecting all notes of the same letter throughout the piece or movement. Each minor key has the same signature as its relative major.

A seal; especially, in England, the seal used by the sovereign in sealing private letters and grants that pass by bill under the sign manual; -- called also privy signet. I had my father's signet in my purse. Shak. Signet ring, a ring containing a signet or private seal. -- Writer to the signet (Scots Law), a judicial…

and, a certain size of paper. See under Paper. -- Small hours. See under Hour. -- Small letter. (Print.), a lower-case letter. See Lower-case, and Capital letter, under Capital, a. -- Small piece, a Scotch coin worth about 2 -- Small register. See the Note under 1st Register, 7. -- Small stuff (Naut.), spun yarn, m…

Same as Letterwood.

A sonant letter.

Letters, figures, points, marks, spaces, or quadrats, belonging to a case, separately considered. Out of sorts (Print.), with some letters or sorts of type deficient or exhausted in the case or font; hence, colloquially, out of order; ill; vexed; disturbed. -- To run upon sorts (Print.), to use or require a greater nu…

The letters signified by the signal ( . . . ---. . . ) prescribed by the International Radiotelegraphic Convention of 1912 for use by ships in distress.

than a face type, so as not to receive the ink in printing, -- used to separate words or letters.

A bar or key, in a typewriter or typesetting machine, used for spacing between letters.

rance; a sensible percept received by the imagination; an image. [R.] "The species of the letters illuminated with indigo and violet." Sir I. Newton. Wit, . . . the faculty of imagination in the writer, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent. Dryden.…

To tell or name in their proper order letters of, as a word; to write or print in order the letters of, esp. the proper letters; to form, as words, by correct orthography. The word "satire" ought to be spelled with i, and not with y. Dryden.

The act of one who spells; formation of words by letters; orthography.

A rough breathing; an aspirate, as the letter h; also, a mark to denote aspiration; a breathing. [Obs.] Be it a letter or spirit, we have great use for it. B. Jonson.

To wipe out with a sponge, as letters or writing; to efface; to destroy all trace of. Hooker.

To disarrange, so that the letters or lines stand awry or are mixed and need careful readjustment; -- said of type that has been set up.

To put a stamp on, as for postage; as, to stamp a letter; to stamp a legal document. To stamp out, to put an end to by sudden and energetic action; to extinguish; as, to stamp out a rebellion.

A number or mark placed opposite the lower part of a letter or symbol to distinguish the symbol; thus, a0, b1, c2, xn, have 0, 1, 2, and n as subindices.

To sign one's name to a letter or other document. Shak.

h; as, iota subscript. (See under Iota.) Specifically (Math.), said of marks, figures, or letters (suffixes), written below and usually to the right of other letters to distinguish them; as, a, n, 2, in the symbols Xa, An, Y2. See Suffix, n., 2, and Subindex.