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Glite Dictionary
🏷️ Publisher's mark 📄 Production details
colophon

colophon

9.9
A small picture or mark that a publisher prints in a book
  • noun
  • /ˈkɒləfən/
  • Specialized
translation icon : colofón
  • Many readers overlook the colophon, but it often contains interesting information about the book's creation.

Examples

  • Indexicals are everywhere in medieval manuscripts, taking various forms, such as marginal commentary and images, rubrics, illuminations, scribal colophons, and textual intercalation.

    Academic text (2004)

  • The colophon on the first edition clearly (well, as clearly as its type can!) states "February 1954."

    Blog text (8)

  • This is just before the text offers a short closing prayer, a scribal colophon, and then stops.

    Academic text (2004)

  • My most recent FS acquisition is Le Grand Meaulnes from 1979, and the colophon reads:

    Blog text (17)

  • It is generally accepted that he was a traveling bard. Barnes, "Divine Philosophy," 82. J. H. Lesher, Xenophanes of Colophon.

    Academic text (2017)

  • The colophon at the end of the book details the publisher and the typefaces used.

  • She admired the colophon on the title page, which featured the emblem of a prestigious publisher.

Synonyms

imprint
vscolophon
  • Specialized
10 7.5

The name, address, and edition details of a book's publisher printed inside

can instead be a decorative emblem placed on the title page or at the end

Surface Forms

colophon singular
colophons plural

Etymology

Colophon comes from an old Greek word kolophōn that means 'finish' or 'summit'. A colophon was the final mark at the end of a book, so a publisher's emblem or imprint is called a colophon as the book's 'finishing mark'.