hallmark
noun
- distinguishing feature
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈhɔːlmɑːk/ / /ˈhɔlmɑɹk/ / [ˈhɑɫmɑɹk]
name
Etymology: The company is named after its founder, J. C. Hall, and a reference to hallmark (“official marking”).
- A surname.
- Ellipsis of Hallmark Cards.
noun
Etymology: 1721. From hall + mark, from Goldsmiths' Hall in London, the site of the assay office, official stamp of purity in gold and silver articles. The general sense of “mark of quality” first recorded 1864. Use as a verb from 1773.
- A distinguishing characteristic.
“You know what a university is, and a university degree? It is the necessary hallmark of a man who wants to do anything in teaching.”
“The inference appears to be that there is some subtle connection between immorality and art, as if the handling of the lewd, or the depicting of it, were in some sort the hallmark of the true artist.”
- An official marking made by a trusted party, usually an assay office, on items made of precious metals.
“It can highlight our embodiment, a qualitative step away from the hallmark machines that work so resolutely to disembody us.”
verb
Etymology: 1721. From hall + mark, from Goldsmiths' Hall in London, the site of the assay office, official stamp of purity in gold and silver articles. The general sense of “mark of quality” first recorded 1864. Use as a verb from 1773.
- To provide or stamp with a hallmark.
“The cane was undoubtedly of foreign make, for it had a solid silver ferrule at one end, which was not English hall–marked.”
“[…]everything on my plate those forks and fishslicers were hallmarked silver too I wish I had some I could easily have slipped a couple into my muff when I was playing with them[…]”