#gensfleisch — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #gensfleisch, aggregated by home.social.
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Today's #TodayILearned and #etymology eyeopeners involve quite some typesetting related things, inspired by #StephenFry's #GreatLeapYears #podcast episode A Faustian Pact:
font (n.2)
"complete set of characters of a particular face and size of printing type," 1680s (also fount); earlier "a casting" (1570s); from French fonte "a casting," noun use of fem. past participle of fondre "to melt," from Latin fundere (past participle fusus) "to melt, cast, pour out" (from nasalized form of PIE root *gheu- "to pour"). So called because all the letters in a given set were cast at the same time.matrix (n.)
late 14c., matris, matrice, "uterus, womb," from Old French matrice "womb, uterus" and directly from Latin mātrix (genitive mātricis) "pregnant animal," in Late Latin "womb," also "source, origin," from māter (genitive mātris) "mother" (see mother (n.1)).The many figurative and technical senses are from the notion of "that which encloses or gives origin to" something. The general sense of "place or medium where something is developed" is recorded by 1550s; meaning "mould in which something is cast or shaped" is by 1620s; sense of "embedding or enclosing mass" is by 1640s.
And apparently Johannes #Gutenberg's full name was "Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg", where #Gensfleisch basically means "goose flesh" and Gutenberg was the name of their family house in Mainz.
(Before his development of the printing press, he was involved in "making polished metal mirrors (which were believed to capture holy light from religious relics) for sale to pilgrims to Aachen".)
I thought it kinda interesting that Gutenberg's investor for the Bible printing workshop was Johann Fust, or... #Faust.
Given how this investment kinda lead to Gutenberg losing control over the Bible printing workshop, one could argue Gutenberg had kinda sold his soul in a Faustian way. ;)