Other forms: signatures
Your signature is your own name written by your own hand, the same loopy way every time, at the bottom of a form. On a cheque, on a contract, on the delivery driver's screen where it comes out looking like nobody's name at all.
A signature proves you agreed to something, so signatures get witnessed, checked and forged; sign is the verb, and a signatory is a person or country that has signed a treaty. Put in front of another noun it means the thing you are known for: a chef's signature dish, a band's signature sound, a boxer's signature punch. Music has key signatures and time signatures, the marks at the start of a stave that tell you which sharps to play and how to count. An email signature is the block of contact details at the foot of the message, and in medicine and security a signature is a telltale pattern — the signature of a virus, the heat signature of an engine.
1nounsignatureYour name written by yourself, used to show that you agree to something.
“The form is not valid without your signature.”
2nounparticularThe particular thing a person or place is best known for.
“Slow-cooked lamb is the restaurant's signature dish.”
3nounmarksThe marks at the start of a piece of music showing the key or the beat.
“The time signature changes halfway through the piece.”
4nounpatternA pattern that identifies something.
“The scanner picked up the heat signature of the engine.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
signature is a written mark.
Signature came from Middle French signature and Medieval Latin signātūra, from signum, 'a sign' — so a signature is literally your sign-making. The native English word it pushed aside was handseten, which put the hand into the name instead.
Proto-Indo-European
*sekʷ-
Medieval Latin
signātūra
Middle French
signature
English, today
signature
Built from
Borrowed from Middle French signature, or from Medieval Latin signātūra, future active periphrastic of verb signo from signum (“sign”), + -tūra, feminine of -tūrus, future active periphrastic suffix. Displaced native handseten.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA