paraph

English

Etymology

John Hancock's signature on the United States Declaration of Independence is famous for its size and its bold paraph.

Inherited from Middle English paraf, from Medieval Latin paraffus or its etymon Middle French paraphe, paraffe, shortening of paragraphe.

Pronunciation

Elizabeth I of England's signature, showing paraph

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpaɹəf/

Noun

Benjamin Franklin's signature, showing paraph

paraph (plural paraphs)

1. A flourish made after or below one's signature, originally to prevent forgery.
2. A mark used by medieval rubricators to indicate textual division.
   • 2016 October 3, “It’s A Wrap”, in Research Group on Manuscript Evidence‎^[1]:

     Commencing with a C-shaped paraph-sign in the same brown ink, the glosses are linked to their corresponding passages by alphabetic signs comprising single letters in a sequence beginning with a in each margin, moving on to b, c, and d down the page, and, ideally, linking with the same letter in the adjacent column. Such a pairing allows for matching the gloss with the specific location in the text where its comment should be considered.

Translations

flourish after signature

• Bulgarian: завъртулка (bg) f (zavǎrtulka)
• French: paraphe (fr) m
• German: Paraphe (de) f
• Russian: пара́ф (ru) m (paráf), ро́счерк (ru) m (rósčerk)

Verb

paraph (third-person singular simple present paraphs, present participle paraphing, simple past and past participle paraphed)

1. (transitive) To add a paraph to; to sign, especially with one's initials.

References

• “paraph”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, →ISBN.
• “paraph”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "paraph" in WordNet 3.1, Princeton University, 2011.
• (etymology) Paraphe, based on the Collins French-English Dictionary, HarperCollins, Flexible edition, August 1990, →ISBN.
• Paraph, ArtLex Art Dictionary, Michael Delahu, The earliest form of ArtLex appeared on the Web in August, 19; ArtLex was last modified on October 24, 2007, Copyright © 1996-2007.