a printing machine with an ink-fed drum, around which a cut waxed stencil is placed and which rotates as successive sheets of paper are fed into it.
a copy made from a mimeograph.
an office machine for printing multiple copies of text or line drawings from an inked drum to which a cut stencil is fixed
a copy produced by this machine
Formerly a trademark
How does mimeograph compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
A mimeograph is an old-fashioned copy machine. Mimeographs were often used for making classroom copies in schools before photocopying became inexpensive in the mid- to late-20th century. A mimeograph printed copies by pressing ink through a stencil onto paper, which was pulled by a crank through a system of rollers. The copies themselves were often also called mimeographs. Even after the invention of modern photocopiers, mimeographs were a popular way to make cheap copies, and many offices still had the machines as late as the 1990s. The root of mimeograph is the Greek mimeisthai, "to mimic, represent, or imitate."
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Is it sort of like a mimeograph, where the more you copy it, the fuzzier the image gets?
From Slate • Nov. 17, 2025
Steinem remembers the days in which hand-outs and calls to action were made on a primitive duplicating machine called a mimeograph.
From BBC • Dec. 1, 2023
“We did everything from mimeograph to walk door to door,” Molina said.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 25, 2023
Accept them completely and she’d become a mimeograph.
From Washington Post • Feb. 14, 2023
“Couldn’t you forge some official orders on that mimeograph machine of yours and get us out of flying to Bologna?”
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
