Link Centre Dictionary

write

UK/ɹaɪt/ US/ɹaɪt/ very common

verb

1.

produce a literary work

  • “She composed a poem”
  • “He wrote four novels”
Synonyms
2.

communicate or express by writing

  • “Please write to me every week”
3.

have (one''s written work) issued for publication

  • “How many books did Georges Simenon write?”
  • “She published 25 books during her long career”
Synonyms
4.

communicate (with) in writing

  • “Write her soon, please!”
Synonyms
5.

communicate by letter

  • “He wrote that he would be coming soon”
6.

write music

  • “Beethoven composed nine symphonies”
Synonyms
7.

mark or trace on a surface

  • “The artist wrote Chinese characters on a big piece of white paper”
  • “Russian is written with the Cyrillic alphabet”
8.

record data on a computer

  • “boot-up instructions are written on the hard disk”
9.

write or name the letters that comprise the conventionally accepted form of (a word or part of a word)

  • “He spelled the word wrong in this letter”
Synonyms

Origin

From Middle English writen, from Old English wrītan, from Proto-West Germanic *wrītan, from Proto-Germanic *wrītaną (“to carve, write”), from Proto-Indo-European *wrey- (“to rip, tear”). Cognate with West Frisian write (“to wear by rubbing, rip, tear”), Dutch wrijten (“to argue, quarrel”), Middle Low German wrîten (“to scratch, draw, write”) (> Low German wrieten, rieten (“to tear, split”)), German reißen (“to tear, rip”), Norwegian rita (“to rough-sketch, carve, write”), Swedish rita (“to draw, design, delineate, model”), Icelandic ríta, rita (“to inscribe, sketch, write”), German ritzen (“to carve, scratch”), Proto-Slavic *ryti (“to carve, engrave, dig”), Polish ryć (“to engrave, dig”), Czech rýt (“to engrave, dig”). See also rit and rat.

Phrases

  • copy-on-write proxy
  • cross write
  • don't forget to write
  • ghost write
  • nothing to write home about
  • something to write home about
  • teach to read and write
  • that's all she wrote
  • torn write

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

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See also

Related verbs

Entails

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.