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Like any other specialized item, the fountain pen has amassed a lexicon of terms that are unique. And like other jargon languages, fountain pen jargon can be cryptic or confusing. This glossary presents brief definitions for many of the most common pen terms. It is not complete (an impossible goal); but it is a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions for terms to add. (Revised April 22, 2008)

The glossary is organized alphabetically. For numbers, look under the spelled-out form; e.g., for 14K, look under fourteen.

T
tail	See base.
Tanager	See Chinese Red.
taper	(also desk pen taper, quill) A long shaft, usually smoothly streamlined, that is attached to the back end of a desk pen’s barrel for balance and a graceful appearance. Shown here is a Wahl desk pen; the image has been altered to emphasize the taper. See also desk pen.
taper cap	A straight cap that is extended into a long taper; posted, a taper cap resembles the taper of a desk pen and serves the same purpose. The taper-cap pen shown here is a Waterman’s Ideal Nº 24. See also cone cap, slip cap, straight cap, taper.
Taperite	A pen model introduced by Waterman in 1945, intended to compete with the Parker “51”. The Taperite was arguably the mst successful of the “51” competitors. Illustrated here is a Taperite Stateleigh, the top of the model line. Read a profile of the Taperite here.
Targa	An Inlaid Nib™ pen model introduced by Sheaffer in 1976; always referred to in advertising as Targa by Sheaffer instead of the Sheaffer Targa. Produced in many variations, the slender, reliable Targa is arguably Sheaffer’s best pen from the latter half of the 20th century.
tassie	A (usually metal) trim bezel applied to the end of the barrel or cap (or both), frequently as a ring surrounding a “jewel” or other decoration, as shown here. The ring to which the clip of a Parker Vacumatic or “51” is attached is technically not a tassie despite its ring shape and the presence of a jewel.
technical pen	See stylographic pen.
teeth marks	See chew marks.
telephone dialer	(also phone dialer) A desk pen with (usually) a taper that is shorter, thicker, and more rounded on the end than usual, for use in dialing a rotary telephone. Telephone dialers are also known to exist with bright red balls attached at the end of the barrel.
Television	See Televisor, Visulated.
Televisor	A button-filling mid-line pen model produced by Parker during the latter part of the 1930s, probably so named to promote the value of its partially transparent Television ink-view section. See the illustration below (section deeply ambered). See also Visulated.
Tempoint	A series of pens made by Wahl from c. 1918 (about the time Wahl and Moore divided the assets of the Boston Pen Company) to c. 1921. Tempoints appear in both eyedropper-filling (illustrated below) and lever-filling versions. The Tempoint was discontinued in favor of the much better known Wahl Pen.
thermometer case	A case for a mercury oral thermometer, made to resemble a pen and often included as part of a doctor’s set with a pen and a mechanical pencil. Although its clip is of high quality and resembles that on Sheaffer’s pens, the thermometer case shown here was made by an unknown maker. See also doctor’s pen.
thermoplastic	Describes a plastic (resin) material that is solid at ordinary temperatures and softens when heated; many thermoplastics are suitable for injection molding. Celluloid, polystyrene, and acrylics are thermoplastics. See also thermosetting.
thermosetting	Describes a plastic (resin) material that is manufactured as a liquid and sets (hardens permanently) when heated. Bakelite is a thermosetting plastic. See also thermoplastic.
third tier	Term applied to a pen of relatively poor quality, made with thin celluloid or other body material, with thinly plated furniture and almost always having an untipped steel nib. Also applied to a manufacturer of such pens. Many third-tier pens were made with remarkably beautiful celluloids. Among the third tier of U.S. manufacturers were companies such as Arnold, Majestic, Stratford, Travelers, and Welsh. See also first tier, second tier.
threaded cap	See screw cap.
350	See Sheaffer numbers.
375	A designation indicating an alloy that contains 375 parts of gold, by weight, per 1000 parts of the total metal content. The same as 9K. See also 9K.
Thrift-Time	A low-priced Parker pen produced from 1932 to about 1936; notable for having been offered in more than 20 colors, some of them remarkably beautiful and used only on this one model. The threaded cap tassie is made of gold-plated brass instead of Parker’s usual hard rubber, probably to provide sufficient strength given its very low profile.
thumb	(more commonly sleeve, also applied to Parker’s Aero-metric system) A type of filling system. View a description and filling instructions here.
tine	One of the nib’s tapered “fingers”, separated from each other by the slit. The tipping material, or “iridium,” is welded to the ends of the tines. See illustration at nib.
TIPdip	An open-nibbed Touchdown-filling pen line produced by Sheaffer in the 1950s as a lower-priced companion to the Snorkel line. A TIPdip pen’s feed is drilled through lengthwise, as for a Snorkel tube, and then fitted with a center feed that extends the entire length of the drilled hole. With an opening at the exposed end of the feed, the pen can take in ink with only about half of the nib and feed immersed (“dipped”).
Tip-Fill	A feed design introduced by L. E. Waterman in 1933, illustrated to the right. Conventional in most respects, the Tip-Fill feed has a cover over the channels for most of their length, leaving about half of the exposed length open. With the channels covered in this way, the pen was said to be able to take in ink with only about half of the nib and feed immersed. The design was poorly conceived; pens using it did not write as well as pens with Waterman’s venerable Spoon feed, and the Tip-Fill was withdrawn before 1940. See also Spoon feed.
tipped	Describes a nib made with the addition of a hard alloy at the tips of the tines to reduce wear. See also tipping material, untipped.
tipping material	(also “iridium”) A small pellet or ball of a very hard alloy, welded to the tip of the nib and then ground to shape and polished to provide a smooth, durable point (shown to the right, the silvery gray area at the tip of the nib). Although “iridium” is a common term for the tipping material, modern tipping materials rarely contain the actual element iridium; the most common element used is ruthenium, with admixture of such other metals as osmium and platinum. See also iridium (definition 1), Osmiridium, osmium, Plathenium, platinum, ruthenium, tipped, untipped, and the illustration at nib.
titanium	A hard silver-gray metal of the transition series, noted for its lightness, strength, and difficulty of working. Used by Parker for the body and integral nib of the T-1 (1970), a short-lived pen that wrote poorly and cost more than its retail price to manufacture. Used more recently as a nib material; produces a somewhat springy nib that is difficult to adjust and prone to bending if treated as if it were a true flexible nib. See also flexible, nib.
TM	“Thin Model,” a descriptive name applied to Sheaffer’s newly designed, thinner Touchdowns in 1950. The company also applied the TM designation to its Snorkel pens (“Snorkel TM”) upon their introduction in 1952 but later dropped it from the model name.
Toledo	A marketing name used by Pelikan to identify its pen models fitted with barrel Binden of hand-engraved sterling silver and niello in the style made famous by the swordmakers of Toledo, Spain, with the silver portion plated as vermeil. Shown below is a Pelikan M700 Toledo. See also Binde, niello, silver, vermeil.
tooth	The microscopic surface roughness of a nib’s tip that allows ink to cling to the tip. A tip lapped to perfect smoothness will not write.
tooth marks	See chew marks.
Toothbrush	Unofficial common nickname for the Parker Duofold Geometric, manufactured in 1939 and 1940. Derived from the decorative pattern on the pen’s celluloid barrel, with figures resembling a toothbrush as shown to the right.
Touchdown	A series of pens made by Sheaffer beginning in 1949; supplanted in 1952 by the Snorkel but resurrected in the 1960s. View a description and filling instructions here. See also TM.
translucent feed	See transparent feed.
transparent feed	(also translucent feed) A feed that is made of a transparent material, usually either machined acrylic (e.g., Parker VS, 1940s) or molded polystyrene (e.g., most Wearever models, 1950s). See also feed.
trench pen	(also ink-pellet pen) A pen design invented by Parker during World War I; has a small compartment at the back of the barrel, in which the user stored pellets of dried ink. Mixing a pellet with water in the pen’s barrel produced a supply of ink. Parker’s trench pen has a removable blind cap covering the pellet compartment; other manufacturers produced pens of similar design or with improvements such as Mabie Todd’s nonremovable screw-open compartment (illustrated to the right). See also Camel, Instant Ink.
trim	See furniture.
triskelion	(also triskele; plural triskelia or triskeles) An ancient sun symbol used by many cultures worldwide, consisting of three curved arms or three stylized human arms or legs that radiate from a common center. Parker used triskelia of Mesoamerican form (illustrated to the right) in the decoration of the so-called “Aztec” overlay eyedropper pen. See also Aztec.
“TRIUMPH”	The general name Sheaffer gave to the new Triumph-nibbed pens it introduced in 1942, during trhe first few months of the U.S.A.'s involvement in World War II. Produced in both lever-filling and Vacuum-Fil models, these pens are notable for the extravagantly broad cap band they feature. This band allowed the pen’s designers to extend the slender barrel silhouette to the cap without using an all-metal cap — which, in view of wartime restrictions on the use of brass and steel, would have been much more costly. See also Triumph nib.
Triumph Imperial	See Imperial.
Triumph nib	Sheaffer’s unique conical nib, introduced in 1942. Illustrated here by artwork from a wartime Sheaffer advertisement. Initially, Sheaffer made the nibs by forming shaped cuttings from a gold sheet and welding the joint on the underside; later, the company devised a way to form the nibs from tubing. See also hooded nib, Inlaid Nib™, nib, open nib, “TRIUMPH”.
True Blue	See Modernistic Blue.
trumpet	(also bowl, sheath, or tulip) The cup- or bell-shaped socket portion of a desk-set base, into which the pen is inserted. The trumpet is frequently swivel-mounted. Some Parker repair manuals refer to this part as the bowl. In some desk sets it is shaped like, and is called, a tulip. Waterman referred to it as a sheath. Shown here is a Parker Duofold desk base from the 1920s; the image has been altered to emphasize the trumpet. See also desk pen, desk set.
Tuckaway	A series of pens made by Sheaffer; notable for their small size and uniquely abbreviated clip design. Frequently abbreviated “Tucky” in speech. The Tuckaway’s short clip (also called a clasp), shown here on a Touchdown Valiant Tuckaway’s cap, is sometimes mistakenly called a “military clip.” Shown here are three Tuckaways, the original clipless version of 1940-1941, the 1942 revision, and the more common version with a clip, from about 1945 onward.
tulip	1  Collectors’ term for the flower-shaped clip attachment on certain late-1920s Wahl pen models. Illustrated below is a Wahl cap with a Tulip clip.  2  See trumpet.
Turban Top	(also Turban-Top) Nickname for the earliest version of Parker’s Jack-Knife Safety pen (illustrated below), which featured a patented two-part cap design. To cap the pen, the user attached the main cap and then screwed the inner cap against the end of the section to effect a leakproof seal. The inner cap’s decorative knob gave rise to the nickname. See also Jack-Knife Safety.
turned up nib	(abbreviated T. U.) See Waverley nib.
Tuscan	A burgundy-like color used by Moore and Chilton (most notably for the Wing-flow). Tuscan (near right) is somewhat browner than most versions of burgundy. Shown for comparison (far right) is the earlier (and darker) of the two Burgundy colors used on the Sheaffer Snorkel.
1250	See Sheaffer numbers.
“21”	A low-priced pen model introduced by Parker in 1948; remained in production until the early 1970s. The “21” has a hooded nib that is otherwise ordinary in design. There are two versions of the hood design: the first is a thin shell that covers the nib and much of the feed without playing any part in the ink delivery system, and the second is a thicker housing, much like an ordinary gripping section, into which the nib and feed are pressed. This latter design places significant tensile stress on the shell, and shell cracks are increasingly common as the pens age. Shown below is a first-version (Mark I) “21”. Read a profile of the “21” here.
21K	(also 21KT, as used on nibs by Sailor of Japan) A designation indicating an alloy that contains 21 parts of gold, by weight, per 24 parts of the total metal content. The same as 875. See also karat.
twist	(also wringer) A type of filling system. View a description and filling instructions here.
275	See Sheaffer numbers.
2000	See Sheaffer numbers.
two-tone nib	(also 2T nib)  1  A yellow gold nib that is partially plated with a platinum-group metal (white or silver), such as the Sheaffer’s Lifetime Balance nib shown to the right (upper). In some instances, the nib is partially or entirely plated with a platinum-group metal and then, in the areas that are not to be silver in color, plated with gold of a different hue; on the Montblanc 75th Anniversary Meisterstück pens, for example, the second plating is rose gold.  2  A steel nib that is polished very brightly to resemble a richer metal and then partially plated with gold to simulate the appearance of a two-tone gold nib. Two-tone steel nibs are used on some moderately priced pens and also on certain counterfeit models; the Dupont Orpheo nib shown to the right (lower) is a Chinese counterfeit.

The information in this glossary is as accurate as possible, but you should not take it as absolutely authoritative.

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