transcribe

UK/trænˈskɹaɪb/US/trænˈskɹaɪb/

verbB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,807 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: transcribed, transcribing, transcribes

To transcribe is to write out speech or notes in full. Transcribe the interview, transcribed by hand, transcribe the recording.

An hour of audio takes four or five hours to transcribe by hand, which is why it was one of the first jobs machines were given. In music it means writing down a piece by ear or arranging it for another instrument.

Definitions of transcribe

1verbtranscribeTo write out speech or notes in full.B2+
“The secretary transcribed the recording of the meeting word for word.”

transcribe is a writing.

Where it comes from

Latin transcribere means to write across or copy out, from trans plus scribere, to write.

Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kreybʰ-
Latin
trānscrībō — to write again in another place, transcribe, copy
English, today
transcribe

Latin trānscrībō (“to write again in another place, transcribe, copy”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

transcribe in the wild

The Beethoven Symphonies transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt are an example.
Transcription (music)
The French composer Olivier Messiaen transcribed birdsong in the wild, and incorporated it into many of his compositions, for example his Catalogue d'oiseaux for solo piano.
Transcription (music)
Special letters are included to transcribe the speech of people with lisps and cleft palates.
Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet
In Arabic and Maltese philology, the moon letters transcribe non-coronal consonants, but they do not form a natural class.
Peripheral consonant
Other systems are also used to transcribe Japanese into Ukrainian.
Cyrillization of Japanese

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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