roman

Roman, town, Romania

Roman, town (1990 pop. 78,749), NE Romania, in Moldavia, at the confluence of the Prut and Siretul rivers. Sugar refining and the manufacture of building materials are the chief industries. The town was founded in the late 14th cent. by the ruling prince of Moldavia.

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roman, in printing

roman: see type.

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roman

Typeface used most widely in Western typography, the general term for the type of this book's text. Characterized by simple, unembellished shapes, roman was developed by 15th-century printers as an alternative to the heavy-bodied, spiky black letter script. Models for a new type that was easier to cut and read were found in the scriptoria, where scribes, probably at the urging of humanist scholars, were experimenting with a letter face they believed had been used in ancient Rome. Historians now trace its ancestry instead to the letter forms developed for Charlemagne's decrees by Alcuin in the 9th century. Within a century, roman had superseded all other typefaces throughout Europe; the sole exception was Germany, where black letter continued to hold sway into the 20th century.

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roman

a metrical narrative in medieval French literature derived from the chansons de geste

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Roman

1. of or relating to Rome or its inhabitants in ancient or modern times

2. of or relating to Roman Catholicism or the Roman Catholic Church

3. denoting, relating to, or having the style of architecture used by the ancient Romans, characterized by large-scale masonry domes, barrel vaults, and semicircular arches

4. a citizen or inhabitant of ancient or modern Rome

5. Informal short for Roman Catholic