brevier

Meanings

1. The size of type between minion and bourgeois, standardized as 8-point.

Etymology

Probably from Old French or Anglo-Norman *brevier, from Latin breviārium (“breviary”), presumably from its use in printing them, hence a doublet of breviary and brimborion. Most breviaries were not, however, printed with such small type, leading some to conjecture that it instead derived from cognates of brief and has a meaning similar to French petit and German Petit.