long s

plural long s's · alternative long ess

1. The ſ character, as distinct from the short s (which is the s character).

   The Bible itself was quite unknown ground until I was ten and stumbled upon the Apocrypha in an old edition of the Bible printed with long s’s and beautiful early type.

   1914, Una Hunt, Una Mary: The Inner Life of a Child, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 43

   2 more examples

   An instance lately occurred of a work so divided (a prayer-book), where the first part was printed with long s’s, and the last part with round, independent of other deviations;

   1824, J[ohn] Johnson, Typographia, or the Printers’ Instructor: […], volume II, London: […] Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, […], page 27

   He liked me to come into his dressing-room to talk to him while he lathered his face, and I remembered the lie I told him when he asked me if I had used the top of his silver shaving-pot to knock in a nail, and the day when he asked me to read him Burke’s speeches aloud in an edition printed with long s’s.

   1914, George Moore, ‘Hail and Farewell!’: Vale, London: William Heinemann, page 311

   Synonyms: descending s, medial s, tall s