round hand

9.5

A clear style of writing with large round letters

noun

Archaic

: escritura redonda

The invitation was printed in a beautiful round hand, making it easy to read and elegant.

Examples

In the history class, we examined samples of letters written in round hand from the 18th century.
It held writing in a neat, round hand and was sealed at the bottom with the White Flame of Tar Valon.

Fiction book (1991)
She admired the clear and legible round hand of her grandmother's old letters.

Surface Forms

round hand singular

round hands plural

Morphology

round + hand

Here 'hand' denotes a person's handwriting and 'round' describes the shape of the script, so the meaning 'a style of handwriting with large, round curves' is directly derivable from the constituents. This compositional descriptive pattern is common across languages and follows normal adjective + noun modification, so a B1 learner who knows both words would likely understand the MWE.

Etymology

Round hand gets its name from the round shapes of the letters and hand meaning 'handwriting'. It was taught so people's writing would be easy to read, so today round hand means a neat, rounded style of writing.