Jeff

The word “Jeff” means printing trade slang: to gamble using type spacers (em quads) as makeshift dice. In plain terms, an obscure printing-trade term for gambling with type spacers.

“Jeff” is pronounced jehf (/d͡ʒɛf/ in IPA).

Here is “Jeff” used in a sentence: “The printers used to jeff for drinks after their shift.”

“Jeff” is a verb.

The word “Jeff” comes from Old French. Ultimately from Jeffrey, a variant of Geoffrey, from an Old French aristocratic name of Germanic origin.

“Jeff” is a fairly common word in modern English.

In old printing-trade slang, to jeff is to gamble using em quads, the small square metal spacers from a typesetter's case, tossing them like dice. Printers would shake a handful and bet on how many landed face up. It was a common workshop pastime in the hand-typesetting era.

An em quad is a piece of metal type used as blank spacing rather than a printed letter. It is square, measuring an 'em,' the width of the type size in use. Because the pieces are small, flat, and uniform, printers found them convenient to throw like dice when they jeffed.

Rarely. Jeffing belongs to the era of hand-set metal type, so the term faded as printing became mechanized and then digital. It survives mainly in histories of the printing trade and collections of printers' slang, rather than in everyday speech, making it a piece of specialist vocabulary.