Caxton
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English
Etymology
From Middle English Caxton.
Proper noun
Caxton
- A surname.
- (printing) A kind of printing-type in imitation of William Caxton's.
- A village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire district, Cambridgeshire, England (OS grid ref TL3058).
Derived terms
Noun
Caxton (plural Caxtons)
- Any book printed by William Caxton, the first English printer.
- 1880, William Blades, The Enemies of Books, page 37:
- I recall vividly a bright summer morning, many years ago, when, in search of Caxtons, I entered the inner quadrangle of a certain wealthy College in one of our learned Universities.
- 2011, Seymour De Ricci, English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts (1530-1930), page 43:
- This remarkable passion of the British nobility for editiones principes and Caxtons seems to have lasted but a couple of decades.
Middle English
Etymology
Possibly from Caxton, Cambridgeshire, from Old English Caustone (Domesday Book, 1086), from Cah (name of an Anglo-Saxon settler), Kakkr (Scandinavian personal name), or ker (“umbelliferous plants”) + tūn.
Proper noun
Caxton
- a surname, equivalent to English Caxton
- 1477, William Caxton, “Et sic est finis”, in The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, Westminster, London: William Caxton, folio 74, recto:
- Here endeth the book named the dictes or sayengis of the philosophres enprynted. by me william Caxton at westmestre the yere of our lord .M.CCCC.Lxx vij.
- (please add an English translation of this quotation)
Descendants
- English: Caxton
References
- ^ George D. Painter (1976) William Caxton: A Biography, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, published 1977:
- There is a Caxton in Cambridgeshire, near a crossway on the Roman road of Ermine Street nine miles west of Cambridge, where to this day one of the last gibbets in England looms squat and weather-blackened, once a good pull-up for highwaymen. The derivation seems uncertain, but the name and spelling fit our man, and have led some enquirers to favour this Cambridgeshire village as the starting-point of the Printer’s stock. […] Working from the later, twelfth-century forms Kachestone, Cakeston, the great etymologist Skeat suggested an original Cahestun, meaning the farm of an Anglosaxon settler named Cah; but the equally great Ekwall preferred a derivation from the Scandinavian personal name Kakkr (with which the chief present-day specialist P. H. Reaney concurs), or else from ker meaning umbelliferous plants.