scribe

Someone who writes; a draughtsperson; a writer for another; especially, an official or public writer; an amanuensis, secretary, notary, or copyist.

Noun

  1. Someone who writes; a draughtsperson; a writer for another; especially, an official or public writer; an amanuensis, secretary, notary, or copyist.
    • [T]he pleasure of writing on wax with a stylus is exemplified by the fine, flowing hand of a Roman scribe who made out the birth certificate of Herennia Gemella, born March 128 AD. - 2013 September 14, Jane Shilling,...

    1. A person who writes books or documents by hand as a profession.

      • The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone,[…]. Scribes, illuminators, and scholars held such...
  2. A journalist.
  3. A writer and doctor of the law; one skilled in the law and traditions; one who read and explained the law to the people.
  4. A very sharp, steel drawing implement used in engraving and etching, a scriber.

Origin

From Middle English scribe, from Old French scribe (“scribe”), from Late Latin usage of scrība (“secretary”) (used in the Vulgate Bible translation to render Ancient Greek γραμματεύς (grammateús, “scribe, secretary”), which had been used in its turn to render the Hebrew סופר (“writer, scholar”)) from scrībere (“to write, draw, draw up, draft (a paper), enlist, enroll, levy; orig. to scratch”), probably akin to scrobs (“a ditch, trench, grave”).

Forms

scribes

Synonyms

amanuensis scrivener tabellion

Related

notary

Derived

air scribe etching scribe scribal scribely scribacious

Verb

  1. To write.
  2. To write, engrave, or mark upon; to inscribe.
    • There—at Ioue wexed wroth, and in his ſpright / Did inly grudge, yet did it well conceale; / And bade Dan Phœbus Scribe her Appellation ſeale. - c. 1597–1598, Edmund Spenser, “Two Cantos of Mutabilitie: […]. Book VII,...
    • he scribed his name on the mould, and wrote it on the two pieces of pasteboard - 1812, anonymous author, The Trial:
    • There was the curious fascination expressed regarding the triangular relationship between the poor white, the black, and the hookworm — suggesting a desire to differentiate and segregate the poor white body from that of...
  3. To record, as a scribe.
  4. To write or draw with a scribe.
  5. To cut (something) in order to fit it closely to an irregular surface, as a baseboard to a floor which is out of level, a board to the curves of a moulding, etc.
  6. To score or mark with compasses or a scribing iron.

Origin

From Middle English scryben (“to write”), from Latin scrībō (“to write”). Doublet of shrive. The carpentry sense comes from the way a workman uses a compass to mark a line before cutting.

Forms

scribes scribing scribed

Related

ascribe circumscribe describe inscribe prescribe proscribe shrive transcribe