Other forms: editors
An editor is the person who goes through a piece of writing before anybody else sees it — cutting what does not work, fixing what is wrong, asking the writer what they actually meant. Every book you have read has had one.
The job comes in several shapes. A newspaper's editor runs the whole paper and decides what goes on the front page; a copy editor works line by line on spelling, grammar and facts; a commissioning editor chooses which books get made at all. Film has editors too, and theirs is the largest hidden job in cinema, cutting thousands of shots into something that feels like one story. Then there is the software named after the person: a text editor, a photo editor, a video editor. The verb is edit and the work is editing, so a manuscript that has been through it is edited — never editored.
1nouneditorThe person who corrects and improves a piece of writing before it is published.~21%
“Her editor cut the last chapter completely.”
2nounchargeThe person in charge of a newspaper, magazine or website.~53%
“The editor decided to run the story on Sunday.”
3nounfilmThe person who cuts filmed shots together into a finished film.~11%
“The editor made three different versions of the ending.”
4nouncomputerA computer program for changing text, pictures or video.~15%
“Open the file in a plain text editor.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 180 sentences found in the wild and placed 180 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Latin ēdō meant to give out, to put forth, to publish, and an ēditor was the one who put a thing out into the world. That is still the job under all the newer parts of it — someone decides what gets given out, and in what state.
Medieval Latin
ēditor
English, today
editor
Built from
From Medieval Latin ēditor. From Medieval Latin ēditor, from Latin ēditor, from ēditus, perfect passive participle of ēdō (“give out, put forth, publish”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA