1. A name (which came into use about 1600) for the form of type used by the early printers, as distinguished from the ‘Roman’ type, which subsequently prevailed. A form of it is still in regular use in Germany, and in occasional use (under the name of ‘Gothic’ or ‘Old English’) for fancy printing in England.
1640–4. Charge agst. Abp. Canterb., in Rushworth, Hist. Coll., III. (1692), I. 115. His diligence to send for the Printer, and directing him to prepare a Black Letter, and to send it to his Servants at Edenburgh, for Printing this Book.
1712. Arbuthnot, John Bull, II. vii. (1727), 60. The Seven champions in the black-letter.
1871. Earle, Philol. Eng. Tong., § 99. The form which is known to us as ‘Black Letter,’ and which was hardly less rectilinear than the old Runes themselves.
2. That which is printed in this type.
1811. Byron, Hints fr. Hor., 101, note. This is the millennium of black letter.
1860. Hawthorne, Marb. Faun, I. xxiv. 263. Like a page of black letter, taken from the history of the Italian republics.
3. attrib. (Usually with hyphen, or as one word.)
1791. Maxwell, in Boswell, Johnson, an. 1770. He loved … the old black-letter books.
1800. Ritson, Rob. Hood, II. iv. From an old black-letter copy.
1808. W. Irving, Salmag., xviii. (1860), 410. There was a certain black-letter dignity in the name. Ibid. (1820), Sketch Bk., II. 90. He was a complete black-letter hunter.
1845. Ld. Campbell, Chancellors (1857), IV. lxxiv. 6. Not much of a lawyer compared with the black-letter men of these days.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., III. 31. He scornfully thrust aside … all that blackletter learning.
1862. Burton, Bk.-hunter, I. 18. He was not a black-letter man, or a tall-copyist, or an uncut man.
1864. Reader, 23 July, 105/1. The collection of black-letter ballads.
4. Black letter day: an inauspicious day; as distinguished from a red letter (or auspicious) day: the reference being to the old custom of marking the saints’-days in the calendar with red letters.
1757. Smollett, Reprisal, I. ii. (1777), 135. O! the month of November, She’ll have cause to remember, As a black letter day all the days of her life.
Hence Black-lettered ppl. a.
1820. Scott, Abbot, xxxii. Endeavouring … to fix her … attention on the black-lettered Bible which lay before her.
