Word.ws English Dictionary

black-letter

black-letter adjective: written or printed in black letter.

Adjective

black-letter

  1. Written or printed in black letter.
    • a black-letter manuscript or book
    • In the summer of 1877, a gentleman with whom I was well acquainted, took lodgings in Preston-street, Brighton. The morning after his arrival, he found in the W.C. some leaves of an old black-letter book.1880, William Blades, The Enemies of Books, page 54
  2. (figuratively) Given to the study of books in black letter; old-fashioned.
    • Kemble, a black-letter man!1833, James Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald
  3. Of or relating to the days in the calendar not marked with red letters as saints' days; unlucky; inauspicious.
    • black-letter days

Phrases with black-letter

Questions about black-letter

What does black-letter mean?
Black-letter means written or printed in black letter.
What part of speech is black-letter?
Black-letter is an adjective.

Words near black-letter in the dictionary

  1. black-jacks
  2. black-legged kittiwake
  3. black-legged kittiwakes
  4. black-legged tick
  5. black-legged ticks
  6. black-letter
  7. black-letter day
  8. black-letter days
  9. black-letter law
  10. black-lipped pika
  11. black-lipped pikas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black-letter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “black-letter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black-letter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.