manuscript
Pluralmanuscripts
Pluralmanuscripts
- 1A book, composition, or other document written by hand (or typed by a person) rather than reproduced mechanically.
The monastery's library holds a thousand-year-old manuscript bound in cracked leather.
Conservators examined the faded ink of the manuscript under ultraviolet light.
Note
The noun is modeled on Germanic words: Middle Low German hantschrift and Middle Dutch hantscrift, both literally "hand-writing," stand behind Medieval Latin manūscrīptum. The word covers the medieval book worked over by scribes and illuminators. It also covers a writer's private pages, as in the American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897): "He never read me any of his manuscripts."
- 2A single original copy of a book, article, or composition (handwritten or printed) submitted to a publisher as the basis for editing and reproduction.
After two years of writing, he submitted the manuscript to his agent.
The journal rejected the manuscript but invited the author to revise and resubmit it.
Similartypescript, draft, text
Note
Here the word has outgrown its etymology. A manuscript sent to a publisher may be typed or even printed. What makes it a manuscript is its role as the original from which copies will be made. In this sense the word goes with submitting, revising and rejecting. Contrast it with the handwritten document, where the hand is the whole point.
- 3Produced by hand (or, by extension, by manual typewriting) rather than printed mechanically.
The archive's manuscript sources predate the invention of printing.
Researchers compared the manuscript version with the later printed edition.
Similarhandwritten
Oppositeprinted
Note
Latin supplies the parts, manū ("by hand") and scrīptus ("written"), but Classical Latin never joined them. The compound is Medieval Latin, and English has it by 1597. The adjective is not comparable, since one text cannot be more manuscript than another. It usually stands before a noun, as in manuscript sources or a manuscript copy, where it marks the handwritten witness against the printed one.
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Practice
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Origins
Recorded from 1597, from Medieval Latin manūscrīptus, a calque of Germanic origin, made from Latin manū ("by hand") and scrīptus (past participle of scribere, "to write"). It is not found in Classical Latin.
From Medieval Latin manūscrīptum ("writing by hand"), a calque of Germanic origin, comparable to Old English handġewrit and Old Norse handrit ("manuscript"). It is not found in Classical Latin.