Ligne

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A traditional linear measure used primarily in fields like watchmaking ; a slender, narrow line or stripe ; a single horizontal line of printed or written text
2. A specific unit of length historically employed in precision crafts ; a delicate mark or thin stripe appearing in a pattern ; a continuous row of characters forming a line in typesetting
3. An old measurement standard for small distances in specialized trades ; a fine line used in design or decoration ; the arrangement of words or characters in a single row in printed material

Etymology: The English noun "ligne" is a borrowing from French, where "ligne" means "line" in the ordinary sense. It is a doublet of "line": both descend from the same Latin "linea", which English took in two separate waves, once through French and once directly from Latin, so the two forms have settled into different corners of the language. The spelling "ligne" keeps the French look, which is why it reads as a foreign term even to English speakers who know "line" perfectly well. The meanings have drifted in a telling way. In watchmaking, a "ligne" is a traditional unit of length, a twelfth of an inch, used for measuring the diameter of movements and the size of watch parts. In printing and writing, the sense is simply a single horizontal row of text. The core idea of a thin stretch of something stays constant across these uses, even as the measurement and the printed row take their own specialised form.

Synonyms: line