write

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[edit] English

[edit] Etymology

From Middle English writen, from Old English wrītan (“to incise, engrave, write, draw, bestow by writing”), from Proto-Germanic *wrītanan (“to carve, write”), from Proto-Indo-European *wrei- (“to rip, tear”). Cognate with Dutch rijten (“to rip, tear”), Low German riten (“to tear, split”), German reißen (“to tear, rip”), Swedish rita (“to draw, design, delineate, model”), Icelandic ríta (“to cut, scratch, write”), German ritzen (“to carve, scratch”).

[edit] Pronunciation

[edit] Verb

write (third-person singular simple present writes, present participle writing, simple past wrote or (archaic) writ, past participle written or (archaic) writ)

A painting of a man writing.
  1. (ambitransitive) To form letters, words or symbols on a surface in order to communicate.
    The pupil wrote his name on the paper.
    Your son has been writing on the wall.
  2. (transitive) To be the author of (a book, article, poem, etc.).
    My uncle writes newspaper articles for The Herald.
  3. (transitive) To send written information to.
    (UK) Please write to me when you get there.
    (US) Please write me when you get there.
  4. (transitive) To show (information, etc) in written form.
    The due day of the homework is written in the syllabus.
  5. (intransitive) To be an author.
    I write for a living.
  6. (transitive, computing) To record (data) mechanically or electronically.
    The computer writes to the disk faster than it reads from it.
  7. (transitive, South Africa, Canada, of a form, a document, etc.) To fill in, to complete using words.
    I was very anxious to know my score after I wrote the test.

[edit] Synonyms

[edit] Antonyms

[edit] Derived terms

[edit] Translations

to form letters, etc.
to send a letter to
to be the author of
to show (information)
to be an author
record (data)
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked

[edit] Noun

write (plural writes)

  1. (computing) The operation of storing data, as in memory or onto disk.
    How many writes per second can this hard disk handle?

[edit] References

[edit] Statistics

[edit] Anagrams

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