ink-well

plural ink-wells

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of inkwell.

   Having learned in this way how to dip his pen, the pupil should next dip it in his ink-well and write.

   1909, Albert W[illistine] Clark, Public School Penmanship: A Handbook for Teachers, Boston, Mass.: Ginn and Company, page 19

   5 more examples

   After settling into his seat he suddenly finds that there is scarcely any ink in his ink-well, and he promptly takes advantage of the fact to make a journey across the room to procure the ink-pot, […] busily engaged in drawing a head on the brass square of his ink-well.

   1898, Public School Magazine, volume II, pages 42–43

   (If Mr. Crawford has any more tales of lonely parishes in his ink-well, more than one of his readers would be grateful if he would write them out.) Just now the ink-well appears to need replenishing, for “Fair Margaret” is dry and dreggy.

   1906 February, “[Books of the Day] Fair Margaret by F[rancis] Marion Crawford”, in The Reader: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine, volume VII, number 3, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, page 340, columns 1–2

   In the library a lamp stood on a tripod of hooves, once those of a deer, and on the writing-table, furnished with the thickest of inlaid writing-papers, was an ink-well made from another, larger hoof, perhaps that of the moose in the hall, king of all these relics.

   1985, Angelica Garnett, Deceived with Kindness: A Bloomsbury Childhood, San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, →ISBN, page 59

   For what makes happy the one we adore makes us happy; what not, not; the universe is a void, an ink-well otherwise.

   1998 spring, Joyce Carol Oates, “From the Negro-Lover: The Way Out”, in TriQuarterly, number 102, page 77

   It may indeed feel uncomfortably small if, say, from the finding of the scrolls it is inferred directly that the ink-wells found at Qumran belonged to scribes who used them to copy scrolls, and from the finding of the ink-wells it is inferred directly that the site was a scribal center.

   1998 winter, Edna Ullmann-Margalit, “Writings, Ruins, and Their Reading: The Dead Sea Discoveries as a Case Study in Theory Formation and Scientific Interpretation”, in Social Research, volume 65, number 4, page 856