Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definitions: Ligature |
LigatureNoun1. Thread used by surgeons to bind a vessel (as to constrict the flow of blood). 2. Something used to tie or bind. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "ligature" was first used: 14th century. (references) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Computing | A combination of two or more characters into a single symbol, either for aesthetic appearance, or to articulate a diphthong. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A ligature is also the device which holds a reed on to the mouthpiece of some woodwind instruments such as the saxophone and clarinet. In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. Generally, ligatures replace characters that occur next to each other when they share common components. Ligatures are a subset of a more general class of figures called "contextual forms". Contextual forms describe the case where the particular shape of a letter depends on its context (surrounding letters, whether or not it's at the end of a line, etc.).
One of the most common ligatures is "fi." Since the dot above a lowercase "I" interferes with the loop on the lowercase "F," when "f" and "i" are printed next to each other, they are combined into a single figure with the dot absorbed into the "f," which appears as "fi".
An example of a more general contextual form is the Greek lowercase sigma. When typesetting Greek, the selection of which sigma to use is determined by whether or not the letter occurs at the end of the word.
Ligatures were originally used by medieval scribes to conserve space and increase writing speed. A 14th century manuscript, for example, will include hundreds of ligatures. Early typefaces used ligatures in order to emulate the appearance of hand-lettered manuscripts. As typesetting became more automated, most of these ligatures fell out of common use. It is only recently that computer based typesetting has encouraged people to start using them again (although "fine art" printers have used them all along). Generally, ligatures work best in typefaces which are derived from calligraphic letterforms. Also useful are contextual forms, such as swash capitals, terminal characters, and so on.
A good example of a computer typeface with a moderately rich set of ligatures is the Computer Modern Roman typeface that is provided with TeX, which includes the ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl ligatures which TeX automatically uses when it finds these letters juxtaposed in the text.
This table shows unligatured sets of letters on the left, and the corresponding Unicode ligature on the right. Not all browser/operating system combinations will render the table correctly.
| AE | Æ |
| ae | æ |
| OE | Π|
| oe | œ |
| ff | ff |
| fi | fi |
| fl | fl |
| ffi | ffi |
| ffl | ffl |
| ij | ij |
| st long | ſt |
| st small | st |
| sz | ß |
It is important to note that the letter Æ (æ) when used in the Danish or Norwegian languages is not a typographical ligature, and must never be treated as such. It is a distinct letter and vowel. Likewise, the letter ß is a distinct letter in the German.
See also: Danish, Norwegian and German alphabet.
External Links
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Ligature."
Synonym: LigatureSynonym: binder (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Connection | Fastener, fastening, tie; ligament, ligature; strap; tackle, rigging; standing rigging, running rigging; traces, harness; yoke; band ribband, bandage; brace, roller, fillet; inkle; with, withe, withy; thong, braid; girder, tiebeam; girth, girdle, cestus, garter, halter, noose, lasso, surcingle, knot, running knot; cabestro, cinch, lariat, legadero, oxreim; suspenders. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Ligature |
| English words defined with "ligature": Double letter ♦ Ligate, ligation, Ligator ♦ Strangulated, Strangury. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "ligature": HOOD-WINKED ♦ Pomeroy type ligature. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "ligature": liable. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Ligature" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. French (ligature). |
| Domain | Title |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | Johnson & Johnson, Ligature Laboratories, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Corner windows.Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| "Ligature" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 92.86% of the time. "Ligature" is used about 14 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 92.86% | 13 | 97,576 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 7.14% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 14 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "ligature": Pomeroy type ligature. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
ligature | 27 |
ligature winslow | 4 |
clarinet ligature | 3 |
des ligature trompes | 3 |
ligature oleg | 3 |
ligature module | 2 |
ligature strangulation | 2 |
download ligature ocr | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "ligature"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | lidhje (affinity, alliance, bandage, bearing, binding, bond, bracer, bracing, catena, communication, confederate, confederation, conjunction, connection, connexion, contact, cord, coupling, dressing, federation, join, joining, joint, knot, league, ligament, link, link up, linkage, nexus, rapport, regard, relation, relevance, relevancy, respect, seam, signalling, tap, tie, tie up, truss, tying), vizë bashkuese, qep (dry up, hold one's tongue, needle, seam, sew, sew on, stitch, tab, tailor), pe (rope, thread), bashkim germash, bashkim (affiliation, alignment, alliance, amalgamation, coalescence, community, compound, confederation, conflux, conjunction, consolidation, coupling, fusion, hookup, integration, interconnection, interflow, interfusion, joinder, joining, joint, junction, league, linkage, merger, reconcilability, reunion, seam, soldering, splice, unification, union, welding). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | وصل (arrive, attain, befall, butt, check, come, conduct, connect, convey, hook up, joining, joint, link, make, mark, plumb, reach, receive, result, roll in, show up, steer, touch, voucher), عقدة رابطة, ضمادة (bandage, dressing, lint, pad, stupe), ضمد (bandage, dress), اداة وصل, ربط (attach, attachment, bind, connect, couple, faster, hitch, interface, involve, join, knit, knitting, lash, lash down, link, moor, relate, rope, secure, set, slur, strap, swaddle, tether, tying, unite), رباط (band, bind, bond, cord, couple, juncture, knot, ligament, ligation, swathe, truss), شريط رابط. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | връзка (alliance, association, bond, bunch, cement, channel, communication, concatenation, connection, connexion, contact, copula, cord, coupler, intercommunication, lace, leverage, liaison, ligament, link, nexus, noose, overlay, point, reference, regard, relation, relationship, relevance, relevancy, string, tie, touch), лигатура, лигирам, превързвам (bandage, dress), превръзка (bandage, bandaging, dressing, fillet, suspensory). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | ligatura (bind, slur, tie). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | ligatur (joined letters, ligatures, quaint character), dobbelttype (joined letters, ligatures, quaint character), afsnøring (arrest of blood circulation, blood arrest, constriction, Esmarch tourniquet, ligate, tourniquet). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | toebinden (tie, tie up), afbinden (ligate, tie, tie up, untie). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto | ligfermi (tie, tie up). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Farsi | نوار (Band, Braid, Fascia, Lace, Rand, Ribbon, Strip, Swath, Swathe, Tape, Welt), کلیدکوک سازهای زهی , زخم بند, طلسم (Abracadabra, Amulet, Charm, Glamor, Glamour, Incantation, Juju, Spell, Talisman), خطارتباط, رشته (Branch, Catena, Filament, Rank, Reeve, Sequence, Strand, String, Suite, System, Thread, Tissue, Tract, Train), رباط (Ligament, Sinew), شریان بندی , شریان بند (Tourniquet), دویاچندحرف متصل بهم , بند (Article, Bond, Clamp, Clause, Dam, Dike, Fascia, Fit, Hinge, Internode, Joggle, Joint, Levee, Ligament, Line, Link, Manacle, Noose, Paragraph, Provision, Proviso, Segment, Sling, Snare, Stanza, Tie, Trawl, Weir, Wristband), بخیه زنی . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | ligatuuri (quaint character), kaksoiskirjain (quaint character). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | ligature (ligation). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | binde (bandage, bandage dressing, binding, braid, cord, fascia, fillet, linking, napkin, sanitary napkin, sling, string, strip, strip of material, tape, taping, tie), ligatur (quaint character), Doppelbuchstabe. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | σύμπλεγμα (cluster, complex, group, quaint character). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | משלבת אותיות, לי'טור", תחבושת (bandage, compress, dressing), ש ץ (cord, lace, latch, rib, strap, string). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | elkötés. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | legatura (banding, bend, binding, bookbinding, cable binding, cable clench, cable stopper, constriction, cover, deligation, entanglement, fastening, hooping, interlocking, lacing, lashing, ligation, quaint character, slur, socket, tying). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 結紮" , 結紮糸 , 結紮 . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | けっさつじゅつ, けっさつし, けっさつ. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | spank (tourniquet). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | igaturelay ligamento (band, bind, bond, bridle, chorda, cord, desmoid, ligament, ligamentous, linkage, string, tendon, tie), ligadura (bandage, bandage dressing, bind, bond, deligation, ligation, roller bandage, tie), laqueação (constriction), constrição (choke, closure, constriction). (various references) litere duble, ligaturã. (various references) лигатура. (various references) ligatura, vezivanje (binding, liaison, linkage, seizing, slur), sliveno slovo, podvezivanje, dvogubo slovo. (various references) ligadura (bond, constraint, constriction, deligation, glide, lashing, ligament, ligate, ligation, link, tie). (various references) ligatur (quaint character). (various references) ผูก (band, bind down, bind off, bound, fasten, ligate), การผูก (lacing). (various references) bir araya getirmek (agglomerate, band together, collect, gather, knock together, piece together, rake together), bağlamak (affiliate, assign, attach, attribute, band, bandage, belay, bend, bind, bond, brace, braid, clasp, colligate, concatenate, conjoin, connect, copulate, cord, couple, do up, engage, enthral, enthrall, fasten, fasten up, fix, fixate, grapple, guy, hitch, hook on, hook up, infix, interconnect, interlink, interlock, inthral, join, knit, knit together, knit up, knot, lace, lace up, lash, lash down, leash, link, link up, lock, lock up, mediatize, oblige, put through, rivet, rope, settle, string, subordinate, switch to, tether, tie, tie down, tie up, truss, unite, Wed), bağ (alliance, bandage, beginnings, binder, bond, brace, connection, connexion, copula, copulation, cord, corelate, daughter, desmo-, fascia, fastener, fastening, header, knot, lace, league, ligament, link, linkage, linkup, nexus, noose, relation, relationship, string, tie, tie up, truss, vinculum, vine, vineyard, yoke). (various references) з'"днання (articulation, association, coalescence, conjugation, conjunction, copulation, coupling, hookup, joinder, joining, junction, link up, linkage, linking, mounting, union), зв'язування (binding, fastening, joining), зв'язок (association, bonding, bracer, catena, chain, coherence, communication, conjunction, connection, connexion, contact, join, liaison, ligament, link, nexus, pertinence, pertinency, rapport, relationship, thread, tie), лігатура (alloy, bind). (various references) dải buộc mối r ng buộc, dây buộc (tether, tie). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | ligamentum, ligare. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "ligature": ligatured, ligatures. (additional references) | |
| |
"Ligature" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Higaturu, Libaude, ligtu, ligustri, Logetorp, logique. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-e-g-i-l-r-t-u" | |
-1 letter: tegular, uralite. | |
-2 letters: aiglet, aigret, augite, gaiter, gelati, glaire, gluier, glutei, guitar, ligate, ligure, regilt, reguli, retail, retial, ritual, rugate, rutile, tailer, tergal, triage, uglier. | |
-3 letters: agile, aglet, alert, alter, argil, argle, argue, ariel, artel, auger, aurei, gault, glair, glare, gluer, grail, grate, great, gruel, guile, guilt, gular, irate, lager, large, later, legit. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-e-g-i-l-r-t-u" | |
+1 letter: curtilage, granulite, graticule, ligatured, ligatures, trialogue. | |
+2 letters: curtilages, granulites, graticules, laureating, multigrade, multirange, regularity, regulating, regulation, regulative, resaluting, theurgical, trialogues, ulcerating, urogenital. | |
+3 letters: agriculture, centrifugal, elutriating, frugalities, garrulities, legislature, outlearning, regulations, reluctating, revaluating, triangulate, unfaltering, vulgarities. | |
+4 letters: adulterating, agricultures, angularities, caterwauling, centrifugals, deregulating, deregulation, edulcorating, elucubrating, figuratively, gesticulator, grossularite, irregularity, legislatures, metallurgies, metallurgist, neutralising, neutralizing, reevaluating, regularities, repopulating, reregulating, reregulation, reticulating, revictualing, slaughtering, triangulated, triangulates, ultraheating, unflattering, urinogenital. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)4C 69 67 61 74 75 72 65 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references).-.. .. --. .- - ..- .-. . |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01001100 01101001 01100111 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)L i g a t u r e |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)004C 0069 0067 0061 0074 0075 0072 0065 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)4675736786878471 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Translations: Ancient 11. Derivations 12. Anagrams | 13. Orthography 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
