Word.ws English Dictionary

nroff

UK/ˈɛnɹɒf/

nroff verb: to format (text) using the nroff program, which produces output suitable for simple fixed-width printers and terminal windows.

Verb

nroff (third-person singular simple present nroffs, present participle nroffing, simple past and past participle nroffed)

  1. (transitive) To format (text) using the nroff program, which produces output suitable for simple fixed-width printers and terminal windows.
    • The user either selects a new filename, edits the default file, nroffs it to the screen, or to a printer, or logs out.1985, Eric Foxley, UNIX for super-users, page 158
    • You could contrive macro sets that nroffed a document onto a printer […]1991, Computer Language, volume 8, page 18

Forms of nroff

third-person singular presentnroffs
present participlenroffing
past participlenroffed
pastnroffed

Origin of nroff

Name of the program, short for new roff; an earlier similar program was called roff, a shortening of runoff.

Questions about nroff

What does nroff mean?
Nroff means to format (text) using the nroff program, which produces output suitable for simple fixed-width printers and terminal windows.
What part of speech is nroff?
Nroff is a verb.
How do you pronounce nroff?
Nroff is pronounced /ˈɛnɹɒf/ (UK).
What is the past tense of nroff?
The past tense of nroff is nroffed.

Words near nroff in the dictionary

  1. NRMT
  2. nrn
  3. nRNA
  4. nRNAs
  5. NRO
  6. nroff
  7. nroffed
  8. nroffing
  9. nroffs
  10. NROL
  11. NROLs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nroff (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.

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