paraph

John Hancock's signature on the United States Declaration of Independence is famous for its size and its bold paraph.

From Middle French paraphe, paraffe.

Elizabeth I of England's signature, showing paraph

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpaɹəf/

Benjamin Franklin's signature, showing paraph

paraph (plural paraphs)

1. A flourish made after or below one's signature, originally to prevent forgery.
2. A mark used by medieval rubricators to indicate textual division.
   • 2016 October 3, “It’s A Wrap”, in Research Group on Manuscript Evidence‎:

     Commencing with a C-shaped paraph-sign in the same brown ink, the glosses are linked to their corresponding passages by alphabetic signs comprising single letters in a sequence beginning with a in each margin, moving on to b, c, and d down the page, and, ideally, linking with the same letter in the adjacent column. Such a pairing allows for matching the gloss with the specific location in the text where its comment should be considered.

paraph (third-person singular simple present paraphs, present participle paraphing, simple past and past participle paraphed)

1. (transitive) To add a paraph to; to sign, especially with one's initials.

• “paraph” in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, →ISBN.
• “paraph” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "paraph" in WordNet 3.0, Princeton University, 2006.
• (etymology) Paraphe, based on the Collins French-English Dictionary, Harpercollins, Flexible edition, August 1990, →ISBN.
• Paraph, ArtLex Art Dictionary, Michael Delahu, The earliest form of ArtLex appeared on the Web in August, 19; ArtLex was last modified on October 24, 2007, Copyright © 1996-2007.