Other forms: printed, printing, prints
To print is to put words or pictures onto paper with a machine. Pressing print and listening to the sheet being pulled through, a newspaper coming off the presses at midnight, a boarding pass printed at a machine in the airport.
It covers publishing too: the book was printed in Glasgow, they printed her letter in Saturday's paper. Print also means to write in separate letters instead of joined-up handwriting — please print your name in the box — which is what forms are asking for. As a noun it stretches wide: print is text on a page (the small print of a contract is where the awkward clauses hide), a copy of a photograph or artwork (a signed print), a pattern on cloth (a floral print), and the mark a body leaves (footprints in mud, fingerprints on a glass). In print means published and for sale; out of print means the publisher has stopped making it.
1verbprintTo produce words or images on paper using a machine.~33%
“Could you print two copies of the agenda before the meeting?”
2verbbookTo produce a book or newspaper, or to publish something in one.~4%
“The paper printed a full apology the next day.”
3verbwriteTo write words in separate letters rather than joined-up handwriting.~2%
“Please print your name clearly at the top of the form.”
4nounphotographA copy of a photograph or a picture made from an original.~4%
“She bought a framed print of the harbour.”
5nounpatternA pattern printed onto cloth.~2%
“The dress was a bold floral print.”
6nounappearWords as they appear printed on a page.~55%
“The print was too small to read without glasses.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 26 sentences found in the wild and placed 26 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Print is a worn-down enprinten, the Middle English word for impressing or imprinting — English simply dropped the front off it, leaving imprint behind as the full form. Its Old French cousins printer and preindre go back to Latin premere, to press, which is exactly what a press does.
Middle English
*printen
English, today
Built from
From Middle English printen, prenten, preenten, an apheretic form of emprinten, enprinten (“to impress; imprint”) (see imprint). Compare Dutch prenten (“to imprint”), Middle Low German prenten (“to print; write”), Danish prente (“to print”), Swedish prenta (“to write German letters”). Compare also Late Old French printer, preindre (“to press”), from Latin premere (“to press”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA