fineprint

F4I1N1E1P3R1I1N1T1

A form of fine print — The details, restrictions, terms, or conditions, especially of a contract, often printed in very small type.

UncommonScrabble 14

Meanings

nounfineprint (uncountable)
  1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of fine print.

    Tenement landlords sue for back rents with voices like the fineprint of loan-contracts.

    1977, Clyde Fixmer, “Canal Street, Chicago”, in David Kherdian, editor, Traveling America with Today’s Poets, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., →ISBN, page 36
    4 more examples

    The Kauravas led by Duryodhana were the villains. His participation was, therefore, for the restoration of righteousness and the defeat of adharma. However, while in broad terms this description of his role is sustainable, the fineprint of his involvement militates against the assumption of any unquestioned ethical clarity.

    2001, Pavan K. Varma, “Warrior”, in The Book of Krishna, New Delhi: Penguin Books, published 2009, →ISBN, page 95

    We’re under no compulsion to say that it is postmodern to be invariably concerned with ‘betrayal’. But there are signs – in postmodernism’s vigilant and diligent regard for local contexts and the contingency of meanings, its eminent ‘lack of trust’ in language as a medium for the representation of truth, its unsleeping attention to the fineprint of what is said, its rigorous aim to search out inconstancy, inconsistency and contradiction, and its express intent on the dismemberment of foundational authority – that we may be on the right track in conceiving of a connection.

    2001, Cristopher Nash, “[Ways of Speaking] Processes”, in The Unravelling of the Postmodern Mind, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, →ISBN, pages 76–77

    Mountbatten may not have influenced the fineprint of the award on any regular basis, but he undoubtedly did inspire some of its vital features.

    2009, Jaswant Singh, “Mountbatten Viceroyalty: The End of the Raj”, in Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence, New Delhi: Rupa & Co., →ISBN, page 441

    ‘The transactions of this institution are bound by a number of regulations, procedures and operational standards, generally known as the laws of the universe. Basic Newtonian principles, plus a few more recently discovered ones. It’s in the fineprint on the form.’

    2011, Alex Woolf, “Buying Time”, in Time out of Time (Chronosphere; 1), Brighton, East Sussex: Scribo, Book House, The Salariya Book Company, →ISBN, page 16
Cite this entry
APA

fineprint. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fineprint

MLA

“fineprint.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fineprint. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “fineprint,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fineprint.

Source: fineprint on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.