The verb con’script (a back formation from con’scription) is an exception, and script itself is both a noun and a verb, as is scribble. Notice that the verbs in this set of words are generally formed with – scribe and the nouns and adjectives with – script-: verbsĭe’scriptive, scripted, unscripted, ‘ nondescript

Conscription is the process of making people join the armed forces, and someone who has been con ‘scripted is a ‘ conscript. The scriptures of a religion are its sacred writings.

Doctors’ prescriptions are now printed by computer, but in the old days doctors were notorious for writing them in an indecipherable scribble.Ī manuscript was originally, unlike a typescript, a handwritten text (just as something manufactured was made by hand, or manually). In Britain, at least, unclear handwriting is a characteristic traditionally ascribed to doctors. Prescribe and proscribe can easily be confused with each other, but they have almost opposite meanings: to prescribe something is to say that it should happen, whereas to proscribe something is to denounce or prohibit it. If you want to be taken off an internet mailing list you can often unsubscribe with a click of your mouse, but you might find it more difficult to unsubscribe from an opinion you have expressed! when you take out a subscription to it – your name is added to the existing list of subscribers (although probably not at the bottom of the list!), and if you subscribe to an idea or opinion, it is as if you add your name to the list of people who already support the idea. To subscribe is literally to ‘write below’. To transcribe is literally to ‘write across’, and inscribe to ‘write in’, while to describe was originally to ‘write down’. So, for example, to circumscribe ( circum = around) something is literally to draw a line around it, and thus to limit or restrict it.

Words with scribe