character printer
- noun
- Specialized
:
impresora de caracteres
- Unlike a line printer, a character printer produces text one letter at a time.
Examples
-
The old character printer was much slower than modern laser printers.
-
I bought a new character printer for my office.
-
Early computing labs often used a character printer for basic document output.
-
The character printer is still in use today.
-
Early computing labs often used a character printer for basic document output.
-
Unlike a line printer, a character printer produces text one letter at a time.
-
The old character printer was much slower than modern laser printers.
Synonyms
A printer that prints one letter or number at a time instead of a whole line
A machine that puts letters or numbers on paper one at a time using a serial port
Antonyms
How Fast
- Archaic
1
4.4
- Specialized
- Specialized
- Archaic
98
3.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a printer that prints one character at a time' is directly and transparently built from 'character' (a symbol) + 'printer' (a device); the noun+noun composition yields 'a printer for characters' following normal English compounding. Although the exact technical distinction (per-character vs. per-line printing) is specialized, the basic sense is immediately inferable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents and similar compounds occur cross-linguistically.
Etymology
Character printer comes from early machines that printed each character, a letter or symbol, one at a time, with a small part of the printer hitting the paper like a stamp. That's why it means 'a printer that prints one character at a time'.