photostat
Americannoun
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a camera for making facsimile copies of documents, drawings, etc., in the form of paper negatives on which the positions of lines, objects, etc., in the originals are maintained.
-
a copy made with this camera.
verb (used with or without object)
noun
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a machine or process used to make quick positive or negative photographic copies of written, printed, or graphic matter
-
any copy made by such a machine
verb
Other Word Forms
- photostater noun
- photostatic adjective
- photostatically adverb
- photostatter noun
Etymology
Origin of photostat
Formerly a trademark
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The papers were copied by a photostat machine, which took pictures of them on photographic paper, which, in a photographic darkroom, was immersed, one page at a time, in a fluid called developer.
From The New Yorker • Jan. 6, 2020
Born in 1928, Warhol prefigured the digital age by shaping a personal brand and using technology such as photostat machines, cameras and tape recorders to experiment and create.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 26, 2018
Nunan got around it through a waiver from the Treasury Department; Williams produced a photostat copy.
From Time Magazine Archive
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In the Smithsonian Institution in Washington one day last week, a swart Assyrian-born scholar named Dr. George W. Lamsa bent over a photostat of a large block of weathered stone covered with squiggly characters.
From Time Magazine Archive
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With excitement and inspiration, he held another photostat out for Major Major to study.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
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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.