scribe

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

• IPA^(key): /skɹaɪb/
• Rhymes: -aɪb

scribe (plural scribes)

1. Someone who writes; a draughtsperson; a writer for another; especially, an official or public writer; an amanuensis, secretary, notary, or copyist.
   • 2013 September 14, Jane Shilling, “The Golden Thread: the Story of Writing, by Ewan Clayton, review [print edition: Illuminating language]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)‎, page R28:

     [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.

   1. A person who writes books or documents by hand as a profession.^W
      • 2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist:

        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 stones directly over manuscript pages as an aid in seeing what was being written, drawn, or read.

2. (archaic) A writer and doctor of the law; one skilled in the law and traditions; one who read and explained the law to the people.
3. A very sharp, steel drawing implement used in engraving and etching, a scriber.
4. (in particular) A journalist.

• amanuensis
• scrivener
• tabellion

• scribal
• scribely

scribe (third-person singular simple present scribes, present participle scribing, simple past and past participle scribed)

1. To write.
2. To write, engrave, or mark upon; to inscribe.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

3. To record.
4. To write or draw with a scribe.
5. (carpentry) To cut (anything) in such a way as to fit closely to a somewhat irregular surface, as a baseboard to a floor which is out of level, a board to the curves of a moulding, etc.; so called because the workman marks, or scribes, with the compasses the line that he afterwards cuts.
6. To score or mark with compasses or a scribing iron.

• ascribe
• circumscribe
• describe
• inscribe
• prescribe
• proscribe
• shrive
• transcribe

• notary

• scribe in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• scribe in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

scribe

1. present of scriber
2. imperative of scriber

scrībe

1. second-person singular present active imperative of scrībō