In typography, refers to roman typefaces as opposed to gothic or blackletter fonts; also used in paleography to describe certain ancient writing styles.
From Latin antiqua meaning 'ancient' or 'old,' feminine form of antiquus. In Renaissance typography, it distinguished classical Roman letterforms from medieval gothic scripts.
Renaissance humanists called roman type 'antiqua' because they mistakenly believed it reproduced ancient Roman inscriptional letters, when actually it was based on Carolingian minuscule from the 9th century. This historical confusion gave us the name for what became the foundation of modern typography.
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