(printing, historical) A shallow tray divided into compartments or "boxes" for holding type, traditionally arranged in sets of two, the "upper case" (containing capitals, small capitals, accented) and "lower case" (small letters, figures, punctuation marks, quadrats, and spaces).
(typography, by extension) The nature of a piece of alphabetic type, whether a “capital” (upper case) or “small” (lower case) letter.
