octavo

English

Etymology

From Latin octavo. Doublet of octave, oitava, and ochava.

Noun

octavo (plural octavos)

1. (paper, printing) A sheet of paper 7 to 10 inches (= 17.78 to 25.4 cm) high and 4.5 to 6 inches (= 11.43 to 15.24 cm) wide, the size varying with the large original sheet used to create it. It is made by folding the original sheet three times to produce eight leaves.
2. (printing) A book of octavo pages.
   • 1909 [1793], Benjamin Franklin, edited by Charles W. Eliot, LL.D., The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (The Harvard Classics; 1), U.S.A.: P. F. Collier & Son Corporation, published 1937, page 8:

     He was also much of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station. There fell lately into my hands, in London, a collection he had made of all the principal pamphlets, relating to public affairs, from 1641 to 1717; many of the volumes are wanting as appears by the numbering, but there still remain eight volumes in folio, and twenty-four in quarto and in octavo.

Synonyms

• (paper size): 8º, 8vo
• (book size): 8º, 8vo, O

Translations

paper size

• Catalan: octau (ca) m
• Czech: osmerka (cs) f

book size

• Catalan: octau (ca) m

See also

• foolscap
• A3
• A4

English paper and book sizes

Latin	folio	quarto	sexto	octavo	duodecimo	sextodecimo	octodecimo	vicesimo-quarto	trigesimo-secundo	quadragesimo-octavo	sexagesimo-quarto
ALA	F	Q		O	D	S	T		Tt	Fe	Sf
height (cm)	> 30	25-30	25-30	20-25	17.5-20	15-17.5	12.5-15	12.5-15	10-12.5	7.5-10	< 7.5
printers'	folio	quarto	sixmo	octavo	twelvemo	sixteenmo	eighteenmo	twenty-fourmo	thirty-twomo	forty-eightmo	sixty-fourmo
abbrev.	fo or f	4to	6to or 6mo	8vo	12mo	16mo	18mo	24mo	32mo	48mo	64mo
abbrev.	2º	4º	6º	8º	12º	16º	18º	24º	32º	48º	64º
	<<   bigger       smaller   >>

Asturian

Adjective

octavo

1. neuter of octavu

French

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Adverb

octavo

1. eighthly

Latin

Numeral

octāvō

1. dative/ablative masculine/neuter singular of octāvus

Spanish

Spanish numbers ^(edit)

	80
[a], [b] ←  7	8	9  →
Cardinal: ocho     Ordinal: octavo     Ordinal abbreviation: 8.º     Multiplier: óctuple     Fractional: octavo
Spanish Wikipedia article on 8

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin octāvus. Compare the inherited form ochavo.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /oɡˈtabo/ [oɣ̞ˈt̪a.β̞o]
• Rhymes: -abo
• Syllabification: oc‧ta‧vo

Adjective

octavo (feminine octava, masculine plural octavos, feminine plural octavas)

1. (ordinal number) eighth

Noun

octavo m (plural octavos)

1. (fractional number) eighth

Related terms

• ocho

 

Further reading

• “octavo”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2023 November 28