Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to ancient Italy or its peoples or cultures.
  • adjective Of or relating to the branch of the Indo-European language family that includes Latin, Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, and the Romance languages.
  • adjective Of or being a style of printing type patterned on a Renaissance script with the letters slanting to the right.
  • noun The Italic branch of Indo-European.
  • noun Italic print or typeface.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or relating to the Italian peninsula.
  • adjective linguistics Pertaining to a subfamily of the Centum branch of the Indo-European language family, that includes Latin and other languages (as Oscan, Umbrian) spoken by the peoples of ancient Italy and also the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, etc.); the group of ancient languages of this branch as contrasted with the modern Romance languages; Osco-Umbrian
  • adjective ancient history Pertaining to various peoples that lived in Italy before the establishment of the Roman Empire, or to any of several alphabet systems used by those peoples for writing their languages.
  • proper noun An Italic language.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin Italicus, from Italia, Italy.]

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Examples

  • This is the first book printed in Italic type, an adaptation of the best humanist script of the time.

    The Flow of Information, or: Culture, Shmulture Heather McDougal 2007

  • Aldus Manutius of Venice issues an edition of Virgil in Italic type designed by Francesco Griffo.

    The Flow of Information, or: Culture, Shmulture Heather McDougal 2007

  • This is the first book printed in Italic type, an adaptation of the best humanist script of the time.

    Archive 2007-10-01 Heather McDougal 2007

  • Aldus Manutius of Venice issues an edition of Virgil in Italic type designed by Francesco Griffo.

    Archive 2007-10-01 Heather McDougal 2007

  • [Italic is added for emphasis; capital letters are in the original.] 105

    'I Saw a Nightmare …' Doing Violence to Memory: The Soweto Uprising, June 16, 1976 2005

  • Italics are more than just the slanty-script you see in print to denote ship names and book titles, but it's the hand developed by Italian scribes during the Renaissance - hence the name Italic (which I 'italicize' here in the name of irony as much as description).

    The ZehnKatzen Times 2009

  • Indeed, so successful was Latin that it supplanted all its ancient linguistic cousins—other Italic languages once spoken on the so-called Italic Peninsula: Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, and South Picene.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • Indeed, so successful was Latin that it supplanted all its ancient linguistic cousins—other Italic languages once spoken on the so-called Italic Peninsula: Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, and South Picene.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • This sect of philosophers is called the Italic, by reason

    Essays and Miscellanies 2004

  • Syria, as Dr. Bormann has observed, about AD. 40, when Cornelius is mentioned as “a centurion of the Cohort called Italic,” resident in Caesarea

    Was Christ Born in Bethlehem? 1851-1939 1898

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