indite
Americanverb (used with object)
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to compose or write, as a poem.
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to treat in a literary composition.
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Obsolete. to dictate.
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Obsolete. to prescribe.
verb
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archaic to write
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obsolete to dictate
Usage
Indite and inditement are sometimes wrongly used where indict and indictment are meant: he was indicted (not indited ) for fraud
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of indite
First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English enditen, from Old French enditer, from unattested Vulgar Latin indictāre, derivative of Latin indictus, past participle of indīcere “to announce, proclaim”; see in- 2, dictum
Explanation
The verb indite, rarely used today, means "compose" or "put down in writing," like when you find a quiet place to sit down with your notebook and pen and indite a journal entry or a first draft of a short story. To indite is to write something creative — you indite a letter, and jot a grocery list. Don't confuse indite with its homophone indict, which means "to charge with a crime." Both come from the Latin word dictare, meaning “to declare.” Even if you indite a really bad poem, critics won't indict you.
Vocabulary lists containing indite
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Commonly Confused Words, List 5
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Paradise Lost
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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.
I was about to indite my valedictory; then came your manifesto�Dec. 29 issue�affirming your determination to hold fast to all those virtues for the presumed jettisoning of which I was about to leave you.
From Time Magazine Archive
Even in the White House he never dictated or used a typewriter, "and the number of letters he could indite with his own heavy fist was limited."
From Time Magazine Archive
He that would triumph over the petty trickery of fate must indite history at its source.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
We have a great mind, at some future moment of leisure, to indite an article on the subject, and vindicate, in all its antiquity, the speech of Ossian and of Adam.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846 by Various
Shall I sit down and indite an epistle?
From The Kentuckian in New-York, Volume I (of 2) or, The Adventures of Three Southerns by Caruthers, William Alexander
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.
