forme
- noun
- /fɔrm/
- Archaic
:
forma
- The press operator carefully positioned the forme to ensure a perfect impression on the printed page.
- letterpress forme
Examples
-
It was a very different technology, using lightweight metal plates rather than unwieldy formes filled with heavy metal type.
Academic text (2016) -
My wife and I recently bought a four-thousand-piece monstrosity, a medieval mapamundi from Spain, that came with pithy instructions: (1) Forme el marco exterior del puzzle;
Academic text (1998) -
Depending on the size of the machine and the weight of the forme, press machinists often had an assistant known as an "offsider."
Academic text (2016) -
After the invention of the printing press, the Forme of Curey and other cooking guides were second only to the Bible in popularity.
Fiction book (1998) -
This recommendation is also supported by additional research studies such as A-Abdulghafour (1999) and Campbell, Strickland, and La Forme (1992).
Academic text (2007) -
In fact, the operation of all industrialized printing presses, regardless of whether they are run with heavy letterpress formes or lightweight lithographic plates, requires a detailed series of steps to set up the machine before printing begins.
Academic text (2016) -
This gathering together of practical and scientific instruments goes some way towards explaining why Swift's satire on the idea of "improving speculative knowledge by practical and mechanical operations" begins with the language machine, which looks more like a child's abacus or a printer's forme than like the microscope one might have expected.
Academic text (2016) -
Much of this process is subject to the individual judgment of the press machinist; it involves locking a letterpress forme—comprising multiple pages of composed metal type—onto the press and testing for the quality of the impression.
Academic text (2016) -
To set up for printing, the technician locked the forme in place and adjusted the ink rollers.
-
After printing each batch, the machinist checked the forme for any misalignments or defects.
Synonyms
128
3.5
The way the parts of something are arranged, like on a page or in a room
The arrangement of text and images on a page or screen
Surface Forms
Etymology
Forme comes from the Latin word forma, which means 'shape'. In old printing a forme was the frame that held all the letters and spaces for a page, so it gave the page its 'shape' and became the word for the page layout.