typist
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of typist
1835–45 for earlier sense “typesetter”; 1880–85 for current sense; type + -ist
Explanation
If you work as a typist in an office, you'll be typing up notes, reports, emails, or manuscripts. Nowadays, a typist typically uses a computer keyboard. Once upon a time, typists did all their typing on typewriters, but that's extremely unusual in today's era of computers and printers. Starting around 1884, a typist was "a person who operates a typewriter," although earlier the word meant "compositer," or the person who arranges type in a printing press. Typist comes from type, which derives from the Greek root typos, "dent, impression, or mark."
Vocabulary lists containing typist
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.
It’s for any typist in your life, especially millennials nostalgic for the see-through gadgets.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 23, 2025
But she found a job as a typist at Radio Tokyo, which enlisted POWs in its propaganda division and recruited her in late 1943 as a disc jockey.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 21, 2025
She left school at 15 to work as a typist and copytaker on the Yorkshire Evening Post, and got her first stories into the newspaper’s pages by surreptitiously slipping them into the sub-editor’s tray.
From BBC • Nov. 25, 2024
“I remember my days as a waiter, cleaner, typist, even my time on the unemployment line,” Ms. Streep said in a statement.
From New York Times • Aug. 2, 2023
The typist twists her cigarette into an ashtray, a bright red smear of lipstick on its butt.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
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.
