author

UK/ˈɔː.θə/US/ˈɔ.θɚ/

nounA2+2 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #2,816 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: authors

An author is the person who wrote a book. A best-selling author, the author of three novels, contact the author.

Writer is the broader word and covers journalism, scripts and everything else; author leans towards books and towards the legal fact of having written something. Authoress is obsolete. As a verb, to author is common in American English and disliked in British, where wrote does the job. Note authorship, co-author, and the author of a plan or a policy, meaning whoever devised it.

Definitions of author

1nounauthorThe person who wrote a book.A2+
“The author had never been to the country she wrote about.”
synonyms: writer, novelist
2noundevisedThe person who devised something.B2
“He was the author of the whole policy and disowned it later.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

author is a creator.

Also accepted in games: writer

Where it comes from

Latin auctor means an originator or promoter, from augere, to increase — the same verb behind augment and auction. An author was somebody who caused something to grow, which fits a founder better than a novelist.

Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ewg-
Latin
auctor
Old French
autor
Anglo-Norman
autour
Middle English
auctour
English, today
author

Built from

augeō · Latin — to increase, originate

From Middle English auctour, from Anglo-Norman autour, from Old French autor, from Latin auctor, from augeō (“to increase, originate”). The h, also found in Middle French autheur, is unetymological as there is no h in the original Latin spelling. The OED attributes the h to contamination by authentic. a doublet of auteur.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Definitions of author

1nounauthorThe person who wrote a book.A2+

“The author had never been to the country she wrote about.”

synonyms: writer, novelist

2noundevisedThe person who devised something.B2

“He was the author of the whole policy and disowned it later.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

author is a creator.

Also accepted in games: writer