Other forms: templates
A template is a ready-made pattern you fill in with your own details. An email template, a CV template, a template for the letter.
The physical sense came first and is still used in workshops and sewing: a template is a shaped piece of card or metal you draw round to get the same shape every time. Both senses share the idea of a form that fixes everything except the content. Note that template has become a mild criticism in some contexts — a template answer is one that was not written for you — and that in biology a template strand of DNA is the one copied from.
1nountemplateA ready-made pattern to be filled in with your own content.
“There is a template for the invoice on the shared drive.”
2nounshapedA shaped piece of card or metal used to draw or cut the same shape repeatedly.
“Cut a template first and the rest will match.”
template is a pattern to work from.
A template was a weaver's stretcher. The older form was templet, a diminutive of temple in the loom-maker's sense, and the second syllable drifted to look like plate.
Built from
Alteration of templet, probably from templet, diminutive of temple (“a weaver's stretcher”), variant of tempe, from tempora. Alteration of second syllable due to analogy with plate. Cognate with Faroese tamba (“to stretch out, relax”), Icelandic þamb (“a stretched, bloated, or extended belly”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Office & Admin, Knitting & Sewing