Caxton

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English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Etymology

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From Middle English Caxton.

Proper noun

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Caxton

  1. A surname.
  2. (printing) A kind of printing-type in imitation of William Caxton's.
  3. A village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire district, Cambridgeshire, England (OS grid ref TL3058).

Derived terms

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Noun

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Caxton (plural Caxtons)

  1. Any book printed by William Caxton, the first English printer.
    • 1880, William Blades, The Enemies of Books, page 37:
      I recall vividly a bright summer morning, many years ago, when, in search of Caxtons, I entered the inner quadrangle of a certain wealthy College in one of our learned Universities.
    • 2011, Seymour De Ricci, English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts (1530-1930), page 43:
      This remarkable passion of the British nobility for editiones principes and Caxtons seems to have lasted but a couple of decades.

Middle English

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Etymology

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Possibly from Caxton, Cambridgeshire, from Old English Caustone (Domesday Book, 1086), from Cah (name of an Anglo-Saxon settler), Kakkr (Scandinavian personal name), or ker (“umbelliferous plants”) + tūn.[1]

Proper noun

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Caxton

  1. a surname, equivalent to English Caxton

Descendants

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  • English: Caxton

References

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  1. ^ George D. Painter (1976) William Caxton: A Biography, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, published 1977:
    There is a Caxton in Cambridgeshire, near a crossway on the Roman road of Ermine Street nine miles west of Cambridge, where to this day one of the last gibbets in England looms squat and weather-blackened, once a good pull-up for highwaymen. The derivation seems uncertain, but the name and spelling fit our man, and have led some enquirers to favour this Cambridgeshire village as the starting-point of the Printer’s stock. [] Working from the later, twelfth-century forms Kachestone, Cakeston, the great etymologist Skeat suggested an original Cahestun, meaning the farm of an Anglosaxon settler named Cah; but the equally great Ekwall preferred a derivation from the Scandinavian personal name Kakkr (with which the chief present-day specialist P. H. Reaney concurs), or else from ker meaning umbelliferous plants.