black letter

1. 1.

   a heavy typeface in use from 15th to 18th centuries

   SynonymsGothic

   Broaderfont

Questions about black letter

What does black letter mean?

black letter means "a heavy typeface in use from 15th to 18th centuries".

What is another word for black letter?

Close synonyms include Gothic. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is black letter a common word?

black letter is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.