Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Imprimatur
Pronounced “im-pra-MA-tur,” the word was originally a license that permitted a book to be printed. It comes from the Latin verb imprimere – “let it be printed” or “imprint” – and is often associated with the Catholic Church. The Church used it to sanction books dealing with religious matters to indicate the work contained nothing offensive or dangerous to Catholic doctrine or morals.
In 1600s England, the word was stamped in the front of books with the name of the person or official who authorized the printing. It indicated the work had been officially approved and had that person’s guarantee of good standard. It was a law in England off and on in the seventeenth century that nothing could be printed without an imprimatur from an appropriate official. Samuel Pepys as president of the Royal Society placed his imprimatur on the title page of Sir Isaac Newton’s groundbreaking work “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” in 1687.
The English law was later dropped, but the Roman Catholic Church continues to issue imprimaturs today. In 2011, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, became the first bishop to grant an imprimatur on an iPhone application. It was listed as a confession aid available for download from Apple’s iTunes store for $1.99.
Today imprimatur is more commonly used in broader terms to mean an approval or endorsement of anything. Your boss at work might give you an imprimatur for a new project you propose, meaning his formal consent to go ahead with it. You might think of it in modern terms as a version of Facebook’s thumbs-up sign.
