What is a tome? Lexical meaning of the word. The meaning of the word tome What are tomes

A tome is a book that is thick and large in size. “So big,” jokers say, “that if something happens, you can kill it.”

But volumes are valued not only for their size. As a rule, these books are old, sometimes antique, which means they are very expensive. How can one not respect such books?

The luxurious word “folio” seems to inspire respect even by its sound. It comes from the Latin word “folium”, that is, “leaf”. Just like in Russian, in Latin both the leaf that is on the tree and the leaf that is in the book were called in one word. But this word came into the Russian language through German, where it was burdened with the noble suffix “-ant”.

A sheet should not be confused with a page. “Sheet” is a typographic term and means a large piece of paper with an area of 1 sq.m. Modern printing houses receive paper in the form of rolls. The rolls are cut into sheets measuring 841 × 1189 mm (A0 format), which are sent to printing machines.

It is very simple to imagine the format of a printed sheet; it is the format of an unfolded newspaper. Hence the advice for lovers of so-called “little tricks”. Do you want to measure the area of a plot or apartment, but don’t have a ruler or tape measure at hand? Use the newspaper! The area of the unfolded newspaper sheet is exactly 1 sq.m.

When printing newspapers, two pages are printed on each side on one printing sheet, after which the sheet is folded in half. The newspaper page size (which is half the size of a printed sheet) is called a "folio". And books with pages of this (or approximately this) size began to be called “folios”.

As we can see, tomes appeared primarily thanks to printing technology. Initially, two pages were printed on one large printing sheet on one side, two pages on the other, after which the sheet was folded. Several sheets printed and folded in this way were then sewn into a book and bound. You can read about who started printing books in the article

The large format of the first printed books was also due to the fact that they competed with handwritten books. Handwritten books were large in size and thick. Firstly, due to the fact that the scribe could not write too neatly, and secondly, due to the fact that a large book was more difficult to steal from the library. Surprisingly, there is a parallel to this in the relatively recent past. The size of CDs, and later DVDs, was determined primarily by the size of pockets in clothing in the mid-20th century, when these discs began to go on sale. So that music discs could not be put in a pocket and left the store, “forgetting” to pay, they began to be produced in sizes slightly larger than the size of a standard pocket.

With the development of printing production, printers began to make books of smaller sizes. These books were convenient to take with you on the road. For this purpose, first of all, they came up with more economical fonts, which you can read about in the article. And they began to print four or eight pages on each side on one printing sheet. Such reduced page formats began to be called “quattro” and “octavo”, respectively. Books small size they were no longer called tomes.

The fashion for large, solid books, folios, was revived every now and then. Thus, in the late 1940s, one-volume books of classics began to be published in the USSR, which contained all (or almost all) of the works of A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, N.A. Nekrasov, Balzac. Dictionaries and reference and encyclopedic publications, art albums and many gift editions have been and are being published in the form of volumes. As one joke said, “you pick it up, you have the thing”

foley A nt

1) A book in half-paper format (usually an antique one).

2) decomposition Thick large format book.

Efremova. Ephraim's explanatory dictionary. 2012

Origin and meaning of the word

The term folium has Latin roots and means “leaf”. The word came into Russian speech from German language. Thus, answering the question of what a tome is, we can assume that this is the name of a stack of sheets sewn together, that is, a book. Ancient manuscripts even today evoke reverent reverence and have a high cultural value and, accordingly, cost a lot of money.

Print formats and technologies

With the advent of printing, tomes did not disappear anywhere, but the meaning of the term changed somewhat. In the professional slang of printers, folios began to be called publications that have a format of half a standard sheet of paper with an area of 1 square meter.

To make a book, the sheet was folded in half, and the text printed on it formed four pages. It is easy to calculate that such volumes had a size of 1000 x 500 mm or slightly smaller, since finished book it was still necessary to bind and trim the sheets for alignment. But still, the printed volumes were comparable to their handwritten counterparts.

From ancient times to the present day

When using this word, we primarily mean old publications. But looking at a modern explanatory dictionary, in the article explaining what a tome is, you can see the following meaning: “a big thick book.” Today, in colloquial speech, a tome means any multi-page volume, several times the size of a standard book.

If you come across a collection of works by Russian or foreign classics published during the Soviet period on the shelf of a public library or used bookstore, you can easily understand what a tome means. For example, volume 1 of Dahl’s Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language (1956) has 700 pages, the height of the book is 255 mm, the width is 195 mm, and the weight is more than 2 kilograms.

The word "folio" in modern sound

If you enter a query in any Internet search engine about what a tome is, then in addition to links to the interpretation of the term, you can find the addresses of various firms and companies whose names contain this word. This name is given to a printing house in Kazan, a book publishing house in St. Petersburg, and the House of Books in Moscow. Foliant app for mobile phones and smartphones, designed for reading e-books.

Under this elegant name, many enterprises are registered that are in one way or another connected with the production or sale of printed materials. For example, the Foliant store in Astrakhan sells greeting cards, holiday posters, postal envelopes and other similar goods.

What is a tome? When we pronounce this word, we have associations with past centuries, with antiques, museum values, with ancient, richly decorated expensive books, with the first printer John Gutenberg. But not many people know what the exact lexical meaning of the word “folio” is.

Dictionary definition

The word "folio" originates in Latin, where it has the form "folium". From there it was borrowed into German, in which it became “foliant,” which means leaf. Moreover, the Latin word refers to both a plant leaf and a book leaf.

What is a tome, according to the dictionary definition? If you follow Ushakov’s explanatory dictionary, it turns out that this word has two meanings that are close to each other.

According to the first of them, a folio is an outdated typographical term for a book that has a half-sheet format.

The second meaning is a colloquial word meaning any book that is thick and has a large format.

Special format book

Take a closer look at what a tome is, as a typographic term. I wonder what kind of half-sheet format this is? First, let's figure out what a typographic sheet is. And this is a paper medium with an area of one square meter.

It is quite easy to imagine, since it exactly corresponds to the format of a modern newspaper when unfolded. This format is called “A0” and has dimensions of 841 x 1189 (in millimeters). Thus, the folio will have a size equal to half a standard printing sheet.

The folio format is called in folio. Its page is approximately the size of a modern A3 sheet (29 x 40 cm). It has two designations, one of them is “2°”, the second is “fo”. One printing sheet contains four pages of this format - two on each side. Thus, the meaning of the word “folio” is closely related to the size of ancient books.

Folding and Creasing

The in folio size was obtained after the printing sheet was folded in half using methods such as folding and creasing.

Folding is a typographical term derived from the German verb "to fold." It denotes the action of folding sheets into a notebook of a given volume and format. In this case, it is necessary to observe the sequence of arrangement of each of the pages in order to obtain a book or brochure. The resulting fold line is called a fold.

If the paper is very thick, then creasing was carried out before folding. This concept comes from the German "to go around". Creasing is the operation of applying grooves in the form of a straight line to paper. It is carried out in the case where there is a possibility of damage to an already applied image if a regular fold is used.

Creasing protects the folded area from cracks in the ink layer; with its help, printed products are given a more neat appearance. If previously different machines were used for each of the operations considered, today (since 2002) equipment is used that combines these two functions.

Creation of tomes

As can be seen from the above, the appearance of tomes is closely related to printing technology. When they were created, two pages were first printed on one standard printing sheet, first on one side and then on the other. After this, the sheets were folded according to the methods described above. A number of printed and folded sheets were stitched and bound.

First printed books were large for other reasons as well. At the very beginning of book printing, they tried to make them look like handwritten ones in order to withstand competition with them, since they were more familiar to people. The handwritten editions had impressive dimensions - both in length, and in width, and in thickness. After all, it was difficult for a copyist to write neatly by hand, and besides, a large book was difficult to steal. We must not forget that books were very highly valued at that time.

First volumes

When considering the question of what a tome is, it would be appropriate to mention one of the most famous tomes - the Gutenberg Bible. It is also known as the 42-line Bible, published by the German pioneer John Gutenberg in the first half of the 1450s.

It was a printed version of the Vulgate - the Commonly Accepted Bible, which was a Latin translation of the Holy Scriptures. According to tradition, the publication of this volume is considered the beginning of European book printing. Although in fact this book is not the first incunabula (printed before 1501). But among other first editions it stands out very much good quality registration

It is unlikely that there will be at least one among the readers who has not seen ancient books - in museums, libraries, in pictures, finally. It happens that in fantasy and historical novels, books play an important role, sometimes plot-forming, and can even act as one of the characters. Authors easily insert names such as “manuscript”, “folio”, “code” into their text. But do we always know how a manuscript differs from a codex, and what a real tome should look like? In addition, it is useful to understand how experts systematize and classify ancient books, and what the process of making books looked like at different times.

Since for us the image of an ancient book is associated primarily with medieval Europe (conditionally including here also the Slavic-speaking European part), the discussion of the clay tablets of Nineveh from the library of Ashurbanipal can be postponed until another time. So, familiar appearance books are bound sheets bound in a binding. This form is called code– the first codices were folded and fastened sheets of papyrus or parchment, placed between two wooden tablets, preventing them from folding and bending ( codex in Latin it is “trunk”, i.e. tree). If anyone says that papyrus was used only in the scroll, then I will immediately refer the know-it-all to the Englishman Chester Beatty, whose collection contains handwritten codices on papyrus dating no later than the 2nd century. AD From the 6th century AD the codex gradually replaces the scroll, and the book takes on a familiar appearance. It is believed that the prototype of the code were fastened boards for business records. These signs were called diptych(from Greek diptychos- double, folded in half), their outer sides were not used for writing, but were smooth or decorated with carvings, the inner sides were covered with wax, on which letters were scratched. Over time, tablets began to be made not only of wood, but also of metal or bone. The codex form existed for some time in parallel with the scroll; they had different functional purposes. If for literary and legal texts They chose the codex, since it made it possible to quickly find the right place, but for drawing up documents they preferred a scroll, because the scroll excluded the possibility of replacing sheets, and the text of the document was signed and sealed as a single whole. It is precisely to the abundance of normative acts and sets of rules using the new format that the word “code” owes its later meaning – “a set of normative rules, acts; reference and legal system". By the way, the term “codex” also refers to Mesoamerican texts (handwritten documents of the peoples of Central America, where religious rituals, astronomical tables, and economic reports are described with pictograms). But they have the appearance of a sheet folded like an accordion, and the name “code” here is rather used by specialists in the second, later meaning.

It is clear that at first sheets with handwritten text were fastened into codes - that is, manuscripts. "Manuscript" is the Latin equivalent of "manuscript", "manus" - "hand" and "script" - "written". In ancient Russian usage, manuscripts were called “charate writing” from the word “charter” (tracing paper from Latin/Greek charta– material for writing, i.e. papyrus, parchment). At the same time, both a scroll written by hand and individual unstitched sheets are also called manuscripts, i.e. home distinguishing feature – handmade. For manuscripts, decor played no less a role than the text; it was not only an illustration of the text, but also its addition, its interpretation, its continuation. Decorated with ornaments, initial letters, headpieces, miniatures, such manuscripts are called illuminated(and not at all “illustrated”, as one might think), in the Russian tradition - facial. When writing, two colors were usually used - black and red (cinnabar). If the ink was made from oak nuts, then the main color of the text turned out brownish. Red paint was used to emphasize meaning, highlight capital letters, and important fragments. Hence the name “rubric” (from the Latin ruber- red). In manuscripts intended for ceremonial occasions - gifts, ceremonial services, parchment or paper was tinted, and gold and silver were used in the text. Up to eight people could work on the creation of an expensive book. This is a scribe who reproduced the main text (a cursive scribe); calligrapher writing cinnabar script (article scribe); an artist who drew headpieces and initial letters (headpiece scribe); artist who painted miniatures (icon painter); a master who covered individual parts of initial letters, headpieces and miniatures with gold (gold painter); jewelers who make precious settings for books (goldsmith, silversmith and filigree smith).

Until the end of the 17th century, book bindings were made from wooden planks, leather straps were attached to the spine, to which folded sheets were hemmed. The boards were covered with leather. Depending on the purpose of the book, the bindings could be fixed or casual. Already from these names themselves it is clear that bound bindings are expensive, ceremonial, and everyday bindings are for books of everyday use. For the bound bindings, plates of precious metals, decorated with embossing, enamel, precious stones, filigree (patterns made of twisted gold or silver wire). These decorations were not applied directly to the skin; velvet, brocade, satin, and morocco were placed under them to create a background. Another option for decorating an expensive binding is embossing on leather, trimmed with silver and gold. The edge of the book was painted, or decorative serifs were made on it. Everyday bindings made of ordinary leather or canvas were covered with metal fittings - corners, middles, “bugs” (or beetles), which not only gave a more noble appearance, but also protected the binding from fraying. Clasps or ties were attached to the bindings.

There are three centuries between the appearance of paper in Europe and the invention of printing. Paper production was brought to Spain from the Middle East by the Moors around 1100, and the first paper mill was built in Xativa (a city in Valencia). The emergence of printing dates back to the 15th century. The very first type of printing goes directly back to the Chinese technology of printing on fabric and is called woodcut. Most of all, the woodcut process is reminiscent of making engravings, when an entire page of text was cut out from a board, the board was covered with paint, and an impression was made from it. On sheets printed in this way, the text was on only one side. The invention of typeface in the second third of the 15th century is associated with the name of Johannes Gutenberg, who figured out how to make individual convex metal letters in a mirror image.

Until the moment when such two ingenious inventions as paper and typeface were happily combined, the format of the books produced was arbitrary and depended only on the intention of the copyist or the desire of the customer. Mass printing of books on paper using the typographic method contributed to the formation of a unified system of formats, which was based on the dimensions of the paper sheet and its parts. The first to use this system was the famous Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius, the founder of a publishing dynasty and the author of revolutionary innovations in printing. Its classification has become widespread throughout Europe:

IN PLANO ( planum- flat) - format in a whole unfolded sheet;

IN FOLIO ( folium- sheet) - 1/2 sheet, obtained by folding into one fold;

IN QUARTO ( quarta- quarter) - 1/4 of a sheet, obtained by folding into two folds;

IN OCTAVO ( octava- eighth) - 1/8 of a sheet, obtained by folding into three folds.

Due to the fact that different paper manufacturers had slightly different sizes of printed sheets, the in octavo format until the middle of the 19th century was divided into varieties: large (book block height 250 mm); medium (book block height 225 mm); small (book block height 185 mm).

Accordingly, the answer to the question asked at the beginning of this article - what is a tome? - obvious. This is a book in folio format, half a printed page. True, now any large books have come to be called tomes.

It should be noted that even before Manutius, in the Russian tradition, a conventional unit of measurement was used to indicate the format of handwritten books - dest (right hand, right hand), the size of a full sheet was compared with it and its parts were counted in the same way: in destny sheet - this is a full sheet ; in ten - half a sheet; at half past ten - at quarter; a quarter to ten - an eighth.

Aldus Manutius also became famous for his desire to make the book more accessible, take it out of the palaces and introduce it into mass use. To do this, the book had to become cheaper, which means that, first of all, its format began to decrease. The reduction in format was directly related to the change in the style and size of the fonts - after all, the printed book inherited the handwritten one, and in its first guises tried to almost completely resemble the manuscript, including repeating handwritten fonts, for example, the widespread Gothic minuscule. Manutius took an active part in the development of capacious fonts for books in octavo format. In his typography, artists, imitating ancient examples, used a simple serif font. He is credited with creating the italic script, which, according to legend, imitated Petrarch's handwriting. The first edition printed in 1/8 sheet format with specially created italics was a collection of selected works of Virgil, published in Venice in 1501. However, in octavo did not become the limit of publishing ingenuity. In the 17th century, small-format publications produced by Dutch printers and booksellers Elzevir became extremely popular. Their miniature books represent an example of the art of printing. In their practice, Elseviers used the 1/12 sheet format, introduced back in 1576 by the Belgian typographer Plantin. They were the first to print books in 1/24 format, which was named “Elsevier” in their honor. In this format, Elseviers released a series of popular guides to countries around the world, “Small States,” each volume measuring 88x40 mm.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the periodization of ancient books by antiquarian specialists. Books published between the 1440s (the beginning of printing) and 1851 are clearly divided into two groups according to the date of publication. Published before January 1, 1501 – incunabula (incunabula- cradle, beginning), from January 1, 1501 to January 1, 1851 - paleotypes. Funnily enough, this strict periodization is not based on Scientific research, but the case. The term “incunabula” was first used by bibliophile Bernard von Malinckrodt in 1639 in his pamphlet “De ortu et progressu artis typographicae” (“On the development and progress of the art of typography”), and he took the date of separation of incunabula from paleotypes, as they say, “out of thin air.” " However, this division took root and is still alive. And if everything is clear with paleotypes, then with incunabula bibliophiles have complications. It was mentioned above that the very first printed books were made using woodcut printing, that is, like engravings. So, some book experts refuse to consider woodcut publications as incunabula, and begin counting from the appearance of printed publications.

Well, like this Short story the development of book publishing turned out to be successful. I hope that each of you has learned at least something new from here.

Based on materials:

http://adelanta.biz/starin/antikvar;

Tarakanova O.L. Antique book "Electronic publishing house" MSUP 2000;

Goleva O.P. Circulation and copy properties of the book. MGUP. Tutorial in the courses “Antique books and second-hand book trade” and “Examination of printed materials”.

Dictionary definition

What is a tome, according to the dictionary definition? If you follow Ushakov’s explanatory dictionary, it turns out that this word has two meanings that are close to each other.

According to the first of them, a folio is an outdated typographical term for a book that has a half-sheet format.

The second meaning is a colloquial word meaning any book that is thick and has a large format.

Special format book

Folding and Creasing

The in folio size was obtained after the printing sheet was folded in half using methods such as folding and creasing.

Creation of tomes

The first printed books were large for other reasons. At the very beginning of book printing, they tried to make them look like handwritten ones in order to withstand competition with them, since they were more familiar to people. The handwritten editions had impressive dimensions - both in length, and in width, and in thickness. After all, it was difficult for a copyist to write neatly by hand, and besides, a large book was difficult to steal. We must not forget that books were very highly valued at that time.

First volumes

What is a tome? As soon as you say this beautiful word, the image of an old book with a gilded binding appears in your imagination. Such publications, as a rule, are quite weighty and have large page formats. This is not surprising, since they wrote on sheets of finely tanned animal skin, and then on paper, by hand. Not every copyist could write small letters, so the book volumes turned out to be voluminous and heavy.

Origin and meaning of the word

The term folium has Latin roots and means “leaf”. The word came into Russian speech from the German language. Thus, answering the question of what a tome is, we can assume that this is the name of a stack of sheets sewn together, that is, a book. Even today, ancient manuscripts evoke awe, have high cultural value and, accordingly, are worth a lot of money.

Print formats and technologies

To make a book, the sheet was folded in half, and the text printed on it formed four pages. It is easy to calculate that such volumes had a size of 1000 x 500 mm or slightly smaller, since the finished book still had to be bound and the sheets trimmed for alignment. But still, the printed volumes were comparable to their handwritten counterparts.

From ancient times to the present day

The word "folio" in modern sound

If you enter a query in any Internet search engine about what a tome is, then in addition to links to the interpretation of the term, you can find the addresses of various firms and companies whose names contain this word. This name is given to a printing house in Kazan, a book publishing house in St. Petersburg, and the House of Books in Moscow. The Foliant application for mobile phones and smartphones is designed for reading e-books.

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