amanuensis
Americannoun
-
amanuenses
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of amanuensis
1610–20; < Latin ( servus ) āmanuēnsis, equivalent to ā- a- 4 + manu-, stem of manus hand + -ēnsis -ensis
Explanation
An amanuensis is someone who is good at taking notes when someone else is talking, like a stenographer or an administrative assistant. In Latin, the word amanuensis literally means "a servant from the hand." The word generally refers to a person who is skilled at taking dictation. In a courtroom, you might see a stenographer quickly typing up what everyone in the room is saying. A stenographer is an amanuensis. Anyone who can copy or write down what someone else is saying is considered an amanuensis. So if you've ever taken good notes in class, then you're an amanuensis!
Vocabulary lists containing amanuensis
Book Words for Book Worms
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Song of Solomon
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David Copperfield
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Anthony never married, and she considered herself to some degree Stanton’s amanuensis, confiding to an intimate that she felt that her best work had been “making the way clear” for her friend.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026
She became not only Wiggins’ full-time caregiver but her amanuensis and archivist.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 2, 2022
Gilot is Picasso’s amanuensis, his interlocutor and interpreter, his money manager, his model.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 15, 2019
In later years, with Mr. Merwin’s eyesight failing, Paula Merwin became his amanuensis, taking down new poems at his dictation.
From New York Times ● Mar. 15, 2019
“The sextet of Robert Frobisher. He was an amanuensis for my father, when my father was too old, too blind, too weak to hold a pen.”
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
Further complications ensue when the maestro and the diva fall in love with their amanuenses.
From New York Times ● Jul. 20, 2014
Most of the money he received for the work went to pay his six amanuenses.
From McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader by William Holmes McGuffey
Thábit, one of the Prophet's amanuenses, who collected the fragments with great difficulty "from bits of parchment, thin white stones, leafless palm-branches, and the bosoms of men."
From A Literary History of the Arabs by Reynold Nicholson
This shows the confidential nature of the Vavasours' employment as amanuenses by Tresham in such matters.
From The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605 by George Blacker Morgan
Mr. Murray's profits would have been greater, though "authors," amanuenses, photographers, paper-makers, West-End booksellers, and other parasitic artisans might have suffered slightly.
From Books and Persons Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 by Arnold Bennett
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
