A piece of brass or copper into which the shape of a letter has been punched or engraved. In hot metal typesetting machines like Linotype or Monotype, molten lead alloy is injected against the matrix to form the raised printing surface.
Heard on the job
The machine jammed because a damaged matrix got stuck in the assembler elevator.
Insider tip
In shop slang, matrices are almost always called mats.
Also heard as
- mat