writer

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writ·er

(rī′tər)

One who writes, especially as an occupation.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

writer

(ˈraɪtə)

1. (Journalism & Publishing) a person who writes books, articles, etc, esp as an occupation

2. (Printing, Lithography & Bookbinding) the person who has written something specified

3. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) a person who is able to write or write well

4. (Printing, Lithography & Bookbinding) a scribe or clerk

5. (Music, other) a composer of music

6. (Law) Scot a legal practitioner, such as a notary or solicitor

7. (Law) Writer to the Signet (in Scotland) a member of an ancient society of solicitors, now having the exclusive privilege of preparing crown writs

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

writ•er

(ˈraɪ tər)

n.

1. a person engaged in writing books, articles, stories, etc., esp. as an occupation or profession.

2. a person who commits thoughts to writing: an expert letter writer.

3. someone who sells stock options.

[before 900]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Noun	1.	writer - writes (books or stories or articles or the like) professionally (for pay) author communicator - a person who communicates with others abstracter, abstractor - one who makes abstracts or summarizes information alliterator - a speaker or writer who makes use of alliteration authoress - a woman author biographer - someone who writes an account of a person's life coauthor, joint author - a writer who collaborates with others in writing something commentator, reviewer - a writer who reports and analyzes events of the day compiler - a person who compiles information (as for reference purposes) contributor - a writer whose work is published in a newspaper or magazine or as part of a book cyberpunk - a writer of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology drafter - a writer of a draft dramatist, playwright - someone who writes plays essayist, litterateur - a writer of literary works folk writer - a writer of folktales framer - someone who writes a new law or plan; "the framers of the Constitution" gagster, gagwriter, gagman - someone who writes comic material for public performers ghostwriter, ghost - a writer who gives the credit of authorship to someone else Gothic romancer - a writer of Gothic romances hack writer, literary hack, hack - a mediocre and disdained writer journalist - a writer for newspapers and magazines librettist - author of words to be set to music in an opera or operetta lyricist, lyrist - a person who writes the words for songs novelist - one who writes novels pamphleteer - a writer of pamphlets (usually taking a partisan stand on public issues) paragrapher - a writer of paragraphs (as for publication on the editorial page of a newspaper) poet - a writer of poems (the term is usually reserved for writers of good poetry) polemic, polemicist, polemist - a writer who argues in opposition to others (especially in theology) poetiser, poetizer, rhymer, rhymester, versifier - a writer who composes rhymes; a maker of poor verses (usually used as terms of contempt for minor or inferior poets) scenarist - a writer of screenplays scriptwriter - someone who writes scripts for plays or movies or broadcast dramas space writer - a writer paid by the area of the copy speechwriter - a writer who composes speeches for others to deliver tragedian - a writer (especially a playwright) who writes tragedies wordmonger - a writer who uses language carelessly or pretentiously with little regard for meaning word-painter - a writer of vivid or graphic descriptive power wordsmith - a fluent and prolific writer
	2.	writer - a person who is able to write and has written something diarist, diary keeper, journalist - someone who keeps a diary or journal literate, literate person - a person who can read and write scrawler, scribbler - a writer whose handwriting is careless and hard to read good speller, poor speller, speller - someone who spells words transcriber - someone who makes a written version of spoken material transcriber - someone who rewrites in a different script

writer

noun author, novelist, hack, columnist, scribbler, scribe, essayist, penman, wordsmith, man of letters, penpusher, littérateur, penny-a-liner (rare) detective stories by American writers

Quotations
"The wise writer ... writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward" [F. Scott Fitzgerald Some Sort of Epic Grandeur]
"Some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers" [T.S. Eliot]
"Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders" [Walter Bagehot Estimates of some Englishmen and Scotchmen]

see diarists, dramatists, novelists, poets

Writers

Children's writers Louisa May Alcott (U.S.), Hans Christian Andersen (Danish), Lynn Reid Banks (English), J(ames) M(atthew) Barrie (Scottish), Judy Blume (U.S.), Enid (Mary) Blyton (English), Elinor M(ary) Brent-Dyer (English), Lewis Carroll (English), Babette Cole (British), Eoin Colfer (Irish), Susan Coolidge (U.S.), Karen Cushman (U.S.), Roald Dahl (British), Anne Digby (English), Dr Seuss (U.S.), Ann Fine (English), Kenneth Grahame (Scottish), Laura Ingalls Wilder (U.S.), Mike Inkpen (English), Robin Jarvis (English), Diana Wynne Jones (Welsh), C(live) S(taples) Lewis (English), A(lan) A(lexander) Milne (English), Michael Morpurgo (English), Jill Murphy (English), E(dith) Nesbit (English), Terry Pratchett (English), Philip Pullman (English), Chris Riddell (English), J K Rowling (British), Louis Sachar (U.S.), Dick King Smith (English), Paul Stewart (English), Noel Streatfield (English), Jacqueline Wilson (English)

Short story writers Giovanni Boccaccio (Italian), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentinian), Stephen Crane (U.S), Arthur Conan Doyle (British), Joel Chandler Harris (U.S.), Nathaniel Hawthorne (U.S.), Washington Irving (U.S.), Carson McCullers (U.S.), Katherine Mansfield (N.Z.-British), Herman Melville (U.S.), W(illiam) Somerset Maugham (English), (Henri René Albert) Guy de Maupassant (French), H(ector) H(ugh) Munro (Scottish), O. Henry (U.S.), Dorothy Parker (U.S.), Edgar Allan Poe (U.S.)

Non-fiction writers Joseph Addison (English), Aesop (Greek), Roger Ascham (English), James Boswell (Scottish), John Bunyan (English), Edmund Burke (British), Jane Welsh Carlyle (Scottish), Thomas Carlyle (Scottish), William Godwin (English), Marcus Tullius Cicero (Roman), William Cobbett (English), Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch), Edward Gibbon (English), William Hazlitt (English), R.H. Hutton (English), Thomas Jefferson (U.S.), Jerome K(lapka) Jerome (English), Samuel Johnson (English), Margery Kempe (English), Lord Chesterfield (English), John Lyly (English), Thomas Malory (English), Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (French), Tom Paine (English-U.S.), Samuel Pepys (English), François Rabelais (French), John Ruskin (English), Richard Steele (English), Leslie Stephen (English), Thomas Traherne (English), Izaac Walton (English), Mary Wollstonecraft (English)

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

كَاتِبكاتِب

spisovatel

forfatter

Schriftsteller Autor Schreiber AutorinOptionsschreiber

συγγραφέας

escritor escritora

kirjailijakirjoittaja

écrivain auteur scripteur

pisacspisateljspisateljica

író

rithöfundur

scrittore scrittrice autore

作家

저자

schrijver auteur schrijfster

pisateľ

pisateljpisecpisateljica

författare

นักเขียน

yazar

nhà văn

作家作者

writer

[ˈraɪtəʳ] N [of letter, report] → escritor(a) m/f; (as profession) → escritor(a) m/f, autor(a) m/f
a writer of detective stories → un escritor or autor de novelas policíacas
to be a good writer (handwriting) → tener buena letra; (content) → escribir bien, ser buen escritor/a
to be a poor writer (handwriting) → tener mala letra
writer's cramp → calambre m de los escribientes

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

writer

[ˈraɪtə^r] n → écrivain m
She's a writer → Elle est écrivain.write-up [ˈraɪtʌp] n (= review) → critique f

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

writer

n → Schreiber(in) m(f); (of scenario, report etc also) → Autor(in) m(f); (of TV commercials, subtitles) → Texter(in) m(f); (of music) → Komponist(in) m(f); (as profession) → Schriftsteller(in) m(f); the (present) writer → der Schreiber (dieser Zeilen/dieses Artikels etc); he’s a very poor writer → er schreibt sehr schlecht; (= correspondent) → er ist kein großer Briefschreiber

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

writer

[ˈraɪtəʳ] n (of letter, report) → autore/trice; (as profession) → scrittore/trice
to be a good/poor writer → scrivere/non scrivere bene
he's a thriller writer → è un autore di gialli
he's a writer of novels → è un romanziere
writer's cramp → crampo dello scrivano

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

write

(rait) – past tense wrote (rout) : past participle written (ˈritn) – verb

1. to draw (letters or other forms of script) on a surface, especially with a pen or pencil on paper. They wrote their names on a sheet of paper; The child has learned to read and write; Please write in ink.

2. to compose the text of (a book, poem etc). She wrote a book on prehistoric monsters.

3. to compose a letter (and send it). He has written a letter to me about this matter; I'll write you a long letter about my holiday; I wrote to you last week.

ˈwriter noun

a person who writes, especially for a living. Dickens was a famous English writer; the writer of this letter.

ˈwriting noun

letters or other forms of script giving the written form of (a) language. the Chinese form of writing; I can't read your writing.

ˈwritings noun plural

the collected books, poems, correspondence etc of a particular (usually famous) person. the writings of Plato.

written (ˈritn) adjective

in writing. a written message.

ˈwriting-paper noun

paper for writing letters etc on. writing-paper and envelopes.

write down

to record in writing. She wrote down every word he said.

write out

to copy or record in writing. Write this exercise out in your neatest handwriting.

writer

→ كَاتِب spisovatel forfatter Schriftsteller συγγραφέας escritor kirjailija écrivain pisac scrittore 作家 저자 schrijver forfatter pisarz escritor писатель författare นักเขียน yazar nhà văn 作者

References in classic literature ?

{160} The normal translation of the Greek word would be "holding back," "curbing," "restraining," but I cannot think that the writer meant this--she must have been using the word in its other sense of "having," "holding," "keeping," "maintaining."

View in context

To a man who had but little to do with pleasure sailing (though all sailing is a pleasure), and certainly nothing whatever with racing in open waters, the writer's strictures upon the handicapping of yachts were just intelligible and no more.

View in context

A WRITER of Fables was passing through a lonely forest when he met a Fortune.

View in context

But afterwards, on reading a Catholic writer's history of the church, and then a Greek orthodox writer's history of the church, and seeing that the two churches, in their very conception infallible, each deny the authority of the other, Homiakov's doctrine of the church lost all its charm for him, and this edifice crumbled into dust like the philosophers' edifices.

View in context

Whether this imperfection of structure arises from an enlargement of the plan; or from the imperfect reconcilement in the writer's own mind of the struggling elements of thought which are now first brought together by him; or, perhaps, from the composition of the work at different times-- are questions, like the similar question about the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have a distinct answer.

View in context

It is a consideration, undoubtedly, of great importance both for the writer and the critic; in England especially, where, although (as Mr.

View in context

First, then, I think it may very reasonably be required of every writer, that he keeps within the bounds of possibility; and still remembers that what it is not possible for man to perform, it is scarce possible for man to believe he did perform.

View in context

'Four annas,' said the writer, sitting down and spreading his cloth in the shade of a deserted barrack-wing.

View in context

He is a man who reflects; he is a clever fellow, as well as himself a writer--such a writer! His pen glides along with ease, and in such a style (even when he is writing the most ordinary, the most insignificant of articles) that I have often remarked upon the fact, both to Phaldoni and to Theresa.

View in context

THE WRITER, an old man with a white mustache, had some difficulty in getting into bed.

View in context

Such passages will be found, however, to be based upon facts admitting of no contradiction, and which have come immediately under the writer's cognizance.

View in context

'Autobiography' furnishes in some of its chapters one of the noteworthy existing discussions of the writer's art by a member of the profession.