trailing s

English

Noun

trailing s (plural trailing s's)

  1. The s character, with a looser descending open form than the short s.
    Hypernym: s
    Coordinate terms: long s, short s, round s, terminal s
    • 2013, The Medieval Thought Project, Stanford University, “The Straight s, Its Round cousin, and Its Ligatures”, in Bartholomew the Englishman On the Asp‎[1], archived from the original on 17 December 2025:
      Trailing s, a narrow, elongated round s that dips below the baseline, appears at the end of words.
    • 2003, Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, page 107:
      To a much greater extent than in Northern Textualis, round s was replaced at the end of words by the so-called trailing s, traced in two strokes instead of three or four and occupying less space on the line.
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