Other forms: imprints, imprinted, imprinting
An imprint is a mark left by pressing something into a surface — a boot in mud, a coin in wax, a hand in wet cement. The pressing is the whole idea, and everything else the word does comes from it.
Publishing borrowed it for the publisher's name on a book, because that name was originally printed there by law; a large house may run a dozen imprints, each with its own list and its own look. The verb runs in two directions, and the difference matters: you imprint a pattern onto leather, and an experience imprints itself on you. The second is the commoner one in ordinary speech, and it is always about something that will not now come off.
1nounimprintThe name of a publishing house as it appears on a book, or a branded list within a larger publisher.
“The novel came out under a small literary imprint.”
synonyms: label
2nounimpressionA mark made by pressing something onto a surface.
“There was the clear imprint of a boot in the flowerbed.”
synonyms: impression, print, mark
3verbpressTo press a mark or pattern onto something.
“The company imprints its name on every tool it sells.”
4verbfixTo fix something so firmly in the mind that it stays.
“That afternoon is imprinted on my memory.”
imprint is a mark.
Latin imprimere is in- plus premere, to press in, and it is the same root that gives us press, pressure and impression. Old French empreinte was the mark left behind, which is what an imprint still is: not the pressing, but what the pressing leaves.
Latin
imprimō
Old French
empreinte
English, today
imprint
From Old French empreinte, from empreindre, from Latin imprimō. From Old French empreinte, from the past participle of empreindre, from Latin imprimere.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in News & Communication, Libraries & Museums