Pica

Quick meaning: Pica is a noun meaning (countable) A magpie.

Meaning

(countable) A magpie.

More Meanings

1. (typography, printing, uncountable) A size of type between small pica and English, now standardized as 12-point.
2. (typography, uncountable, usually with qualifier) A font of this size.
3. (typography, countable) A unit of length equivalent to 12 points, officially ³⁵⁄₈₃ cm (0.166 in) after 1886 but now (computing) ¹⁄₆ in.
4. (pathology, usually uncountable) A disorder characterized by appetite and craving for non-edible substances, such as chalk, clay, dirt, ice, or sand.
5. (uncommon, ecclesiastical) A pie or directory: the book directing Roman Catholic observance of saints' days and other feasts under various calendars.
6. Archaic form of pika (“small lagomorph”).

Example Sentences

The three most common nonfood picas were eating of strings and rags; feces, vomit, and urine; and paper, cigarettes, and soil.

Most travellers in the Himalaya are familiar with the pretty little Rodents, known as picas, tailless hares, or mouse-hares, which may be seen in the higher regions[…]

The difference to you of treacle on a marble background is scarcely greater than that of printers' ink on newspaper to me. But anything smaller than pica I do not read with comfort, and below long primer I cannot read at all.

I had been at Baldwin's before dinner in consequence of a letter from him which showed me that, by using a pica instead of an English letter in printing my book, I might comprise it within such a number of sheets as a guinea-volume should contain […].

Word Forms

• picas

Synonyms for pica

Depending on context, synonyms include allotriophagy, chthonophagia, cittosis, geophagy, pique, em.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include em, pika, magpies, green sickness, pagophagia, xylophagia.

Related Dictionary Tools