ink-well (plural ink-wells)
- Alternative form of inkwell.
1898, Public School Magazine, volume II, pages 42–43:After settling into his seat he suddenly finds that there is scarcely any ink in his ink-well, and he promptly takes advantage of the fact to make a journey across the room to procure the ink-pot, […] busily engaged in drawing a head on the brass square of his ink-well.
1906 February, “[Books of the Day] Fair Margaret by F[rancis] Marion Crawford”, in The Reader: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine, volume VII, number 3, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, page 340, columns 1–2:(If Mr. Crawford has any more tales of lonely parishes in his ink-well, more than one of his readers would be grateful if he would write them out.) Just now the ink-well appears to need replenishing, for “Fair Margaret” is dry and dreggy.
1909, Albert W[illistine] Clark, Public School Penmanship: A Handbook for Teachers, Boston, Mass.: Ginn and Company, page 19:Having learned in this way how to dip his pen, the pupil should next dip it in his ink-well and write.
1985, Angelica Garnett, Deceived with Kindness: A Bloomsbury Childhood, San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, →ISBN, page 59:In the library a lamp stood on a tripod of hooves, once those of a deer, and on the writing-table, furnished with the thickest of inlaid writing-papers, was an ink-well made from another, larger hoof, perhaps that of the moose in the hall, king of all these relics.
1998 spring, Joyce Carol Oates, “From the Negro-Lover: The Way Out”, in TriQuarterly, number 102, page 77:For what makes happy the one we adore makes us happy; what not, not; the universe is a void, an ink-well otherwise.
1998 winter, Edna Ullmann-Margalit, “Writings, Ruins, and Their Reading: The Dead Sea Discoveries as a Case Study in Theory Formation and Scientific Interpretation”, in Social Research, volume 65, number 4, page 856:It may indeed feel uncomfortably small if, say, from the finding of the scrolls it is inferred directly that the ink-wells found at Qumran belonged to scribes who used them to copy scrolls, and from the finding of the ink-wells it is inferred directly that the site was a scribal center.
2012, Simon Gough, The White Goddess: An Encounter, Norwich: Galley Beggar Press Limited, →ISBN, page 220:He leaned forward into the light suddenly, no longer a Composer or a Mobster, but a Poet now, as he swept up his spectacles from his desk to his nose, dislodging the pen from behind his ear, catching it deftly, stretching out automatically to dip it in his ink-well while with his other hand he began rummaging through his papers.
