typebar

1 8.9

A metal bar in a typewriter that hits the ribbon to print a letter on paper

noun
/ˈtaɪpˌbɑr/

Archaic

: barra de tipo

He brings his fist down again, and so more of them now, stuck in the clump; the growing mass of blackened typebar heads infuriates him.

Examples

Sure, but in a moment he has a different kind of worry: the print starts to grow dim, then very dim, leaving just ghostly gray impressions; and, taking off the typebar cover, he sees the ribbon isn't moving as it should, and remembers this was a problem before, and why the typewriter was put in the closet in the first place.

Fiction book (2001)
As I pressed down, the typebar struck the ribbon, printing the letter clearly on the page.
While typing quickly, I noticed that one typebar was jammed and needed adjustment.
He replaced the broken typebar to fix the typewriter's printing problem.

Surface Forms

typebar singular

typebars plural

Morphology

typebar = type + bar (transparent) = type + bar

The term denotes a 'bar' associated with 'type' (a part of a typewriter) and its meaning is a direct compound of the two elements.

Etymology

Typebar comes from type ('a letter' or 'printed mark') and bar ('a long piece of metal'), so it means the metal arm that hits the ribbon to make a letter appear on the paper.