photostat

English

Noun

photostat (plural photostats)

1. (dated) A photocopy, especially one made by a Photostat machine.
   • 2000, Kamila Shamsie, Salt and Saffron, Bloomsbury, page 154:

     The next morning […] her suitcase was gone and a photostat of a wedding licence was on her bed, the print smudged here and there.

2. (Malaysia, Philippines) A photocopy made using a photocopier.

   Synonym: xerox

   Coordinate term: mimeograph

3. Positive (black on white) or negative (white on black) reproduction of printed matter or artwork made on a photostat machine, which uses photographic paper instead of a transparent negative, and uses a prism to render the paper negative readable instead of reversed.

Verb

photostat (third-person singular simple present photostats, present participle photostatting or photostating, simple past and past participle photostatted or photostated)

1. (transitive) To make such a photocopy of.
   • 2008, Jonathan Nasaw, Fear Itself:

     […] as soul-deadeningly, eye-strainingly, sleep-inducingly boring as going through fourteen file boxes of sloppily photostatted bank records.

French

Noun

photostat m (plural photostats)

1. (archaic) photocopy

Further reading

• “photostat”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.