mimeograph
/mˈɪmiəɡɹˌæf/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.80 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A machine for making printed copies using typed stencil, eventually superseded by photocopying.
Example Sentences
- "So it also is in regard to the mimeograph, whose forerunner, the electric pen, was born of Edison's brain in 1877. He had been long impressed by the desirability of the rapid production of copies of written documents, and, as we have seen by a previous chapter, he invented the electric pen for this purpose, only to improve upon it later with a more desirable device"
- "The old “work horse” of the office, the mimeograph, was a starred performer at the National Business Show, which was recently held at the New York Coliseum. Although glamour equipment such as the electronic computers have had most of the headlines in recent years, the mimeograph machine is still grinding out billions of copies of material a year."
- "Even the ultra-respectable "Evening Transcript", organ of the Brahmins of culture, was down for $144 for typing, mimeographing and sending out "dope" to the country press."
Etymology
A genericization from a trade name coined by A. B. Dick in 1889. From μῖμος (mîmos) + -γράφος (-gráphos); by surface analysis, mimeo + -graph (but diachronically, mimeo came from mimeograph, not the reverse).