letter (3), lettre

[Fr. lettre, from Latin liter a, litter a a letter, so called from its being originally smeared or scrawled on parchment, not engraved with a knife on wood: Lat. lit us, pa. par. of lino to besmear; Sp. & Port. letra; Ital. letter a.] I. Ordinary Language : 1. A mark or character, written, printed, engraved or painted, and employed to represent a sound, or an articulation of the organs of speech. ( Gower : C. A. , iv.) 2. A written me age or communication; an epistle; a me age communicated from one person to another by means of written characters. "I have a letter from her Of such contents as you will wonder at." Shakesp.: Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 6. 3. ( Pl .): Learning, erudition. "How knoweth this man letters , having never learned?" -John vii. 15. 4. The verbal expre ion; the literal meaning; that which the words literally expre . "We must observe the letter of the law, without doing violence to the reason of the law."-Taylor: Holy Living and Dying. II. Print.: A character used in printing. Type either of metal or wood. Used collectively to represent type, as "a case of letter," "a font of letter." Fat letter is type with body and face broad in proportion to its height. Lean letter is type thin or narrow in proportion to its height. Body letter is type in which the main portion of a book or paper is printed. Body letter is known by different names, according to the size of the type; the sizes in most common use being: Pearl, Agate, Nonpareil, Minion, Brevier, Bourgeois, Long Primer, Small Pica, and Pica. A letter is, in its nature, altogether familiar; this term may be used for whatever is written by one friend to another in domestic life, or for the public documents of this description which have emanated from the pen of writers, as the letters of Madame de Sevigné, the letters of Pope of of Swift; and even those which were written by the ancients, as the letters of Cicero, Pliny, and Seneca; but in strict propriety the latter are epistles -a term more adapted to whatever has received the sanction of ages; and by the same rule, likewise, whatever is peculiarly solemn in its contents has acquired the