indent

1. (transitive) To notch; to jag; to cut into points like a row of teethExamples: "to indent the edge of paper"transitive

2. (intransitive) To be cut, notched, or dented.intransitive

3. (historical) To cut the two halves of a document in duplicate, using a jagged or wavy line so that each party could demonstrate that their copy was part of the original whole.historical

4. (intransitive, reflexive, obsolete) To enter into a binding agreement by means of such documents; to formally commit (to doing something); to contract.Examples: "The Polanders indented with Henry, Duke of Anjou, their new-chosen king, to bring with him an hundred families of artificers into Poland."; "And is this now the Person who is to oblige his Maker? to indent and drive bargains with the Almighty?"; "1803, John Browne Cutting, “A Succinct History of Jamaica” in Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, London: Longman and Rees, Volume 1, pp. xlii-xliii, […] he accidentally met with the commander of a trading vessel bound to Barbadoes, and being actuated by an adventurous spirit, [he] bargained for a passage by indenting himself to serve a planter for four years after his arrival in that island."intransitiveobsoletereflexive

5. (transitive, obsolete) To engage (someone), originally by means of indented contracts.Examples: "to indent a young man to a shoemaker; to indent a servant"obsoletetransitive

6. (typography) To begin (a line or lines) at a greater or lesser distance from the margin. See indentation, and indention. Normal indent pushes in a line or paragraph. "Hanging indent" pulls the line out into the margin.Examples: "to indent the first line of a paragraph one em"; "to indent the second paragraph two ems more than the first"