scribe
/skɹaɪb/[skɹaɪ̯b]
scribe noun: someone who writes; a draughtsperson; a writer for another; especially, an official or public writer; an amanuensis, secretary, notary, or copyist.
Noun
scribe (plural scribes)
- 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, “The Golden Thread: the Story of Writing, by Ewan Clayton, review [print edition: Illuminating language]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review), page R28
- Pay records, supply logs, discharge certificates: all needed scribes, and those who could write might have found themselves being spared the worst of the drudgery.2025 July 15, James Osborne, “Could you have survived as a Roman soldier? Here's the surprising truth about life in the ancient army”, in History Extra, archived from the original on 15 Jul 2025
- 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 stones directly over manuscript pages as an aid in seeing what was being...2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist
- A journalist.
- A writer and doctor of the law; one skilled in the law and traditions; one who read and explained the law to the people.
- A very sharp, steel drawing implement used in engraving and etching, a scriber.
Verb
scribe (third-person singular simple present scribes, present participle scribing, simple past and past participle scribed)
- To write.
- 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, Canto VI.”, in The Faerie Queene, […], London: […] H[umphrey] L[ownes] for Mathew Lownes, published 1609, →OCLC, stanza 35...
- he scribed his name on the mould, and wrote it on the two pieces of pasteboard1812, anonymous author, The Trial
- To record, as a scribe.
- To write or draw with a scribe.
- 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.
- To score or mark with compasses or a scribing iron.
scribe meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
scribe in Hindi
- one who writes; a draughtsman
- मुंशी muñśī, कातिब kātib, मुहर्रिर muharrir
scribe in Tamil
- எழுத்தர், குறியிடு, படி எடுப்பவர்
scribe in Urdu
- one who writes; a draughtsman
- مُنْشی munśī, کاتِب kātib, مُحَرِّر muharrir
scribe in Bengali
- a scribe, a copyist
- অক্ষরজীবী ôkkhôrjibi, অক্ষরজীবক ôkkhôrjibôk, অক্ষরজীবিক ôkkhôrjibik
More languagesFewer languages
- scribe in Telugu
- లేఖకుడు lēkhakuḍu
- scribe in Malayalam
- പകർത്തിയെഴുത്തുകാരൻ, ഗുമസ്തൻ, ആധാരമെഴുത്തുകാരൻ, കാര്യസ്ഥൻ
- scribe in Kannada
- ಲಿಪಿಕಾರ, ಬರೆಯುವವನು, ಬರೆಗ
- scribe in Gujarati
- લહિયો lahiyo
- scribe in Sanskrit
- लेखक lekhaka
- scribe in Pashto
- کاتب kātib, منشي monši, ميرزا mirzā, ليکونکى likunkay
- scribe in Arabic
- نَاسِخ nāsiḵ, كَاتِب kātib
- scribe in Malay
- katib, jurutulis
- scribe in Thai
- อาลักษณ์ aa-lák
- scribe in Vietnamese
- thư lại
Examples of scribe in a sentence
- After scratching out and replacing various words in the manuscript, he scribed a fair copy to send to the publisher.
- Scribes sometimes conflated Aelia Eudocia and Aelia Eudoxia.
- Jorge Figueiredo Correia, a scribe of the Royal Treasury and a great businessman, became a donatary.
Synonyms of scribe
Forms of scribe
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | scribes |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | scribes |
| present participle | scribing |
| past participle | scribed |
| past | scribed |
Origin of scribe
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”).
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.
Words formed from scribe
Words that rhyme with scribe
5 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about scribe
- What does scribe mean?
- Scribe means someone who writes; a draughtsperson; a writer for another; especially, an official or public writer; an amanuensis, secretary, notary, or copyist.
- What is scribe in Hindi?
- Scribe in Hindi is मुंशी (muñśī), कातिब (kātib), मुहर्रिर (muharrir). See Scribe meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is scribe?
- Scribe can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce scribe?
- Scribe is pronounced /skɹaɪb/.
- What is the plural of scribe?
- The plural of scribe is scribes.
Words near scribe in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: scribe (page history and authors); scribe (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); অক্ষরজীবক (Bengali) (page history and authors); లేఖకుడు (Telugu) (page history and authors); scribe (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); scribe (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); લહિયો (Gujarati) (page history and authors); लेखक (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “scribe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scribe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.