a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of printing.
a public clerk or writer, usually one having official status.
Also called sopher, sofer. Judaism. one of the group of Palestinian scholars and teachers of Jewish law and tradition, active from the 5th century b.c. to the 1st century a.d., who transcribed, edited, and interpreted the Bible.
a writer or author, especially a journalist.
a person who copies documents, esp a person who made handwritten copies before the invention of printing
a clerk or public copyist
Old Testament a recognized scholar and teacher of the Jewish Law
Judaism a man qualified to write certain documents in accordance with religious requirements
an author or journalist: used humorously
another name for scriber
1350–1400; Middle English < Latin scrība clerk, derivative of scrībere to write
First recorded in 1670–80; perhaps aphetic form of inscribe
A scribe is a term for someone employed to make written copies of documents. Before printing was invented, the busy scribes in a village would write copies of all the legal documents. As a noun, scribe has several meanings. It's used as an informal term to refer to journalists. Scribe also refers to a sharply pointed tool used for marking wood or metal to be cut. As a verb, it means "to score a line on something with a pointed instrument." The master craftsmen instructed you to scribe a line on the piece of wood where he pointed, to mark the spot where he wanted it cut.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The fragments, written in ancient Greek by what was thought to be an Egyptian scribe and his teacher, are the oldest existing version of the poem arranged into a book.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
I once took a game off the Journal’s late, great tennis scribe, Tom Perrotta.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
Or as one scribe put it, the school didn’t want to be dwarfed by “a gigantic breakfast side dish.”
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 12, 2025
My A.I. scribe has restored the joy to my practice, an experience that is not quantifiable in a metric but which my patients and I can feel in our bones.
From Slate ● Aug. 19, 2025
I think it’s because she’s not working with Edna and Jamie, who’ve been assigned to the scribe committee.
From "Merci Suárez Changes Gears" by Meg Medina
Back in California, Scribe is another tech firm that allows companies to automatically create AI user guides.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2024
Then we’ll stop by Lady & Larder for a Scribe rosé pinot noir, colorful candles and crackers.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2024
Call it "Get to the Hed," "Bet Your Hed" or "The Hed-less Scribe."
From Salon ● Feb. 20, 2023
The Scribe will be available at the end of November and start at $339.99.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 28, 2022
But the Scribe is a very beautiful figure, simple in action and expression, and entirely absorbed in his humble but important work.
From English Painters with a chapter on American painters by Koehler, S. R.
Luke even remembers the name of the first song that he wrote, entitled “Where Am I,” which he scribed after the death of a friend from his church.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 24, 2022
Bill Plaschke’s eloquent elegy about Kobe may be the best column he’s ever scribed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 29, 2021
Petroglyphs, scribed into desert rocks thousands of years ago, alert him to the human pasts of places deemed unpeopled “wastes” by the first white men to apprehend them.
From New York Times ● Jul. 7, 2020
The "apotropaic" marks were scribed into the cave surface as they were thought to keep evil spirits coming from the underworld.
From BBC ● Feb. 14, 2019
These sills were, where the rock was high enough, scribed immediately to it, but if not, they were 'made up' by other timbers scribed to the rock, as shown by Figs 4 and 5.
From Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 by Various
Who is taking care of the patients all those scribing doctors aren’t seeing?
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 5, 2018
I would get John Bradley to start scribing out the entire books that George R.R.
From New York Times ● Aug. 30, 2017
Two decades after that first visit, Magdalen’s 15th-century cloisters, decorated with coats of arms and gargoyles, looked every bit as inspiring as I remembered, though deserted, the scholars no doubt scribing upstairs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2016
The important thing is that the Supreme Court has now closed the circle it was scribing with Bilski and Mayo vs.
From Forbes ● Jun. 19, 2014
The boys were early trained to copy—though not to read; he had to teach himself that part—and those with any skill were drafted into scribing.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
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.
