hallmark

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   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.

2. 2
   noun

   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.

3. 3
   verb

   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.

Simplified etymology

Hallmark originally meant the mark stamped on precious-metal articles after they had been tested for purity at Goldsmiths’ Hall in London. The word is recorded from the early 18th century, although testing and marking at the Hall had taken place since the Middle Ages.

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.

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