Wednesday, September 8, 2010

yet another ety-mo

In printing, a X was a printing plate cast from movable type. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. X came to mean such a ready-made phrase. The French word X comes from the sound made when the matrix is dropped into molten metal to make a printing plate.

What is X?

4 comments:

Mohawk said...

Comeback, comment, Anyway good question.

jungle said...

Cliche right??

Mohawk said...

Retort? I can keep guessing here...

mokkaichino said...

its cliche