dramatist
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of dramatist
Explanation
A dramatist, or playwright, is a person who writes plays. Tennessee Williams, who wrote "The Glass Menagerie," is an example of a famous American dramatist. Using the noun dramatist is actually a pretty dramatic way to refer to a playwright. Its root is the word drama, which comes from a Greek word meaning "to do." So a dramatist is a writer whose works are full of action: stage directions, movement, and lines meant to be spoken by stage actors. If you scramble the letters of the word dramatist, you end up with "amidst art."
Vocabulary lists containing dramatist
Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
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Reading: Literature - High School
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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.
"So as a dramatist, you think, well, how did we get to that in five months?"
From BBC ● Feb. 16, 2026
Most of which would have been beyond the ken of the most daring 19th-century Scandinavian dramatist.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2025
The play by Welsh playwright Gary Owen is believed to be the first time the story of Glyndŵr has been tackled by a dramatist for a large-scale production, with the prince as the main character.
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2025
Don’t underestimate what an intrepid dramatist can do with Shakespeare’s inexhaustible masterpiece.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2025
A New York Times correspondent in a London press conference quoted the author and dramatist James Baldwin, who thought the death of Malcolm X was “a major setback for the Negro movement.”
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
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.
