glúphō · γλύφω · verb · Greek · to carve, to hollow out
Glyph
a mark named after the tool that made it
The English glyph descends from a verb meaning to carve or gouge, and it names a mark by its manufacture rather than by its meaning — which is worth noticing, because the department’s other two Greek words do the opposite. σῆμα names a mark by what it stands in for; σύμβολον by the protocol it belongs to; γλύφω by the chisel. The same root gives hieroglyph, sacred carving, and the architectural triglyph, the three-grooved block on a Doric frieze. Typography then kept the word and discarded the tool: a glyph today is a shape a font hands to a renderer, cut into nothing at all. The word outlived its technology, which is the ordinary fate of everything catalogued in this institute.
Sources · 3
- documented Liddell–Scott–Jones, s.v. γλύφω, to carve or hollow out.
- documented The derivations hieroglyph and triglyph from the same root.
- documented The modern typographic sense of glyph as a rendered shape, distinct from the character it renders.