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dingbat

 
Dictionary: ding·bat   (dĭng'băt') pronunciation
n.
  1. Slang. An empty-headed or silly person.
  2. An object, such as a brick or stone, used as a missile.
  3. Slang. An unspecified gadget or other small article, especially one whose name is unknown or forgotten.
  4. Printing. A typographical ornament or symbol.

[Probably DING1 + BAT2 (as in bats in the belfry).]


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Thesaurus: dingbat
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noun

    A person regarded as strange, eccentric, or crazy: crackpot, crazy, eccentric, lunatic. Informal crank, loon, loony. Slang cuckoo, ding-a-ling, kook, nut, screwball, weirdie, weirdo. See wise/foolish.

Wikipedia: Dingbat
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This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.
Poem typeset with generous use of decorative dingbats, 1880s

A dingbat is an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament" or "printer's character".

The term continued to be used in the computer industry to describe fonts that had symbols and shapes in the positions designated for alphabetical or numeric characters.

An example (something like ITC Zapf dingbats series 100):

 
 

The advent of Unicode and the universal character set it provides allowed commonly-used dingbats to be given their own character codes, from 2700 to 27BF. Although fonts claiming Unicode coverage will contain glyphs for dingbats in addition to alphabetic characters, fonts that have dingbats in place of alphabetic characters continue to be popular, primarily for ease of input.

Contents

Unicode dingbats

Unicode Dingbat Range (2700–27BF)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
2700
2710
2720
2730
2740
2750
2760
2770
2780
2790
27A0
27B0

Typefaces

For more examples of dingbat typefaces, see Wingdings and Webdings. Another famous dingbat typeface, Zapf Dingbats, was designed by the typographer Hermann Zapf.

See also

External links


Translations: Dingbat
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - galning, galskab, gys, gåsehud, typografisk mærke, dims, font, symbol

Français (French)
n. - (Typ) fonte, (US) imbécile, andouille

Deutsch (German)
n. - Dingbat

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - εκκεντρικός, (Η/Υ) συμβολοχαρακτήρας

Español (Spanish)
n. - persona tonta, un objeto que se puede lanzar como proyectil, cualquier cosa pequeña y no especificada, cuyo nombre no se recuerda, ornamento tipográfico o símbolo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - sl. grunka, grej, dumskalle

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
容易投掷的东西, 办法, 主意

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 容易投擲的東西, 辦法, 主意

한국어 (Korean)
n. - (글자 형태 중 하나인) 장식 활자

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) حرف طباعي ( مثل)* , شخص مغفل أو معتوه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮גופן של אות-הדפסה (שם)‬


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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dingbat" Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more