Other forms: wrote, written, writing, writes
To write is to put language down where it will stay — with a pen, on a keyboard, in chalk on a wall. It covers the smallest act and the largest: writing your name on a form, and writing a novel that takes four years.
The everyday trap is the past tense, because write does not take -ed: you wrote it yesterday and you have written it already, and both of those catch learners out long after the present tense is safe. Note also what the object changes. Write a letter and you produce the thing; write your name and you merely inscribe it; write to somebody and there is no object at all, only a person at the other end. British English keeps that to; American English drops it and writes somebody directly.
1verbwriteTo put words down on paper or a screen.~28%
“She writes the date at the top of every page.”
synonyms: jot, note, record
2verbcomposeTo be the author of something — a book, a song, a report.~68%
“He wrote three novels and threw away the first two.”
3verbsendTo send somebody a letter or message.~2%
“Write to me when you get there.”
4verbcomputerOf a computer, to store data somewhere.~2%
“The program writes a log file every time it starts.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
write is a way of recording language.
Old English wrītan meant to carve or scratch, not to spell, and behind it sits Proto-Indo-European *wrey-, to rip or tear. That is exactly right for a people who cut their letters into wood and stone. The ink came later; the word kept the memory of the knife.
Proto-Indo-European
*wrey- — to rip, tear
Proto-Germanic
*wrītaną — to carve, write
Proto-West Germanic
*wrītan
Old English
wrītan
Middle English
writen
English, today
write
From Middle English writen, from Old English wrītan, from Proto-West Germanic wrītan, from Proto-Germanic wrītaną (“to carve, write”), from Proto-Indo-European wrey- (“to rip, tear”). Cognate with West Frisian write (“to wear by rubbing, rip, tear”), Dutch wrijten (“to argue, quarrel”), Middle Low German wrîten (“to scratch, draw, write”) (> Low German wrieten, rieten (“to tear, split”)), German reißen (“to tear, rip”), Norwegian rita (“to rough-sketch, carve, write”), Swedish rita (“to draw, design, delineate, model”), Icelandic rita (“to inscribe, sketch, write”), German ritzen (“to carve, scratch”), Proto-Slavic ryti (“to carve, engrave, dig”), Polish ryć (“to engrave, dig”), Czech rýt (“to engrave, dig”). See also rit and rat.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA