A Few Paragraphs on the Paraph

Yesterday I learned a word:

paraph

It means the fancy squiggle that people like John Hancock added to their formal signatures, as shown above from a replica of the Declaration of Independence.

Originally an additional guard against forgery, the paraph got its name in the late sixteenth century. I don’t see many people using the term in the late eighteenth century. They still signed with paraphs, though, but those squiggles were mostly decorative. Not that they didn’t have a function—good handwriting was a sign of gentility, and a graceful paraph showed even firmer upper-class status.

Which helps to explain why in 1766 Dr. Thomas Young, who didn’t have the benefits of a formal education and probably felt that keenly, was signing his letters with a most elaborate paraph. (He calmed down by the early 1770s, when his signature became more republican.)