block printing

English

Noun

block printing (uncountable)

1. Woodblock printing, a style of printing (common in China and Japan) from engraved boards by means of a sheet of paper laid on the linked surface and rubbed with a brush.

   Synonym: woodblock printing

   • 1883, Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, &c., of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants:

     This invention seems never to have been developed to any practical application in superseding block-printing.

2. A method of printing cotton cloth and paper hangings with colours, by pressing them upon an engraved surface coated with colouring matter.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “block printing”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)