type metal

American  

noun

1. an alloy for making printing types, consisting chiefly of lead and antimony, and sometimes small quantities of tin, copper, etc.

---

type metal British  

noun

1. printing an alloy of tin, lead, and antimony, from which type is cast

---

Etymology

Origin of type metal

First recorded in 1790–1800

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

type metal

Orphaned at 14, he worked during his high-school years first as a houseboy, then as a "pig boy," moving type metal in the composing rooms of the Los Angeles Times.

From Time Magazine Archive

But all of them, good & bad, what with loss of manpower, type metal rationing, impending reduced newsprint and drastic losses in advertising revenue, have found themselves pinched tight.

From Time Magazine Archive

As editor of a crusading weekly back in the 1930s, New Mexico Newsman Will Harrison made so many enemies that he took to carrying a hunk of type metal for self-defense.

From Time Magazine Archive

English pictorial relief prints for book illustration in the first decades of the 18th century had one characteristic in common; they were almost all done with the engraver’s burin on type metal or end-grain boxwood.

From John Baptist Jackson 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut by Jacob Kainen

The shell is then backed with type metal and finished in the usual way.—Printer and Stationer.

From Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 by Various