from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun The letter m.
noun The width of a square or nearly square piece of type, used as a unit of measure for matter set in that size of type.
noun Such a measure for 12-point type; a pica.
from The Century Dictionary.
In colloquial speech, the objective plural of he, she, it: equivalent to them.
Assimilated form of en- before labials.
noun The name of the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, usually written simply m or M.
noun In printing, the square of any size of type.
Assimilated form of en- before labials.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun (Print.) The portion of a line formerly occupied by the letter m, then a square type, used as a unit by which to measure the amount of printed matter on a page; the square of the body of a type.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
pronoun neologismthem (singular). Gender-neutral third-person singular object pronoun, coordinate with him and her.
noun The name of the Latin script letter M/m.
noun typography A unit of measurement equal to the height of the type in use.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun a quad with a square body
noun a linear unit (1/6 inch) used in printing
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
The typographic em is named after the metal type for the capital M in early printing, whose body was square (the printed letter M is almost never one em in width).
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Examples
Now the Internet pioneer is following an old mantra: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Did you ever hear Reagan say, "We got social conservatives here, we got to make sure, yeah, we'll listen to 'em but then we're not gonna pay much attention to 'em."
Bentley College in Massachusetts was the first in the nation to require all its students to have a laptop, but it wasnt long at all before professors started to complain they couldnt live with 'em as much as they couldnt live without 'em.
As Master of the Foxhounds, Ms. Brown blew her horn; the hounds were let out of a nearby truck and bounded up a hill, Ms. Brown close behind yelling "Get 'em, get 'em, get 'em."
As Master of the Foxhounds, Ms. Brown blew her horn; the hounds were let out of a nearby truck and bounded up a hill, Ms. Brown close behind yelling "Get 'em, get 'em, get 'em."
As Master of the Foxhounds, Ms. Brown blew her horn; the hounds were let out of a nearby truck and bounded up a hill, Ms. Brown close behind yelling "Get 'em, get 'em, get 'em."
The dictionary.reference.com version is longer, nd indicates that WordNet is referring to the printing sense: 'a quad with a square body; "since 'em quad' is hard to distinguish from 'en quad', printers sometimes called it a 'mutton quad'",' i.e. quad as in quadrat.
misterpolly commented on the word em
A small space in typography, just a bit longer than an "en".
February 5, 2008
bilby commented on the word em
What's WeirdNet on about?
March 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word em
The dictionary.reference.com version is longer, nd indicates that WordNet is referring to the printing sense: 'a quad with a square body; "since 'em quad' is hard to distinguish from 'en quad', printers sometimes called it a 'mutton quad'",' i.e. quad as in quadrat.
March 29, 2009