write
Pronunciation
  • (British, America) enPR: rīt, IPA: /ɹaɪt/
Verb

write (writes, present participle writing; past wrote, past participle written)

  1. (ambitransitive) To form letters, words or symbols on a surface in order to communicate.
    The pupil wrote his name on the paper.
    Your son has been writing on the wall.
  2. (transitive) To be the author of (a book, article, poem, etc.).
    My uncle writes newspaper articles for The Herald.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619 ↗:
      Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language […]; his clerks, however, understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there.
  3. (transitive) To send written information to.
    (UK) Please write to me when you get there.
    (US) Please write me when you get there.
  4. (transitive) To show (information, etc) in written form.
    The due day of the homework is written in the syllabus.
  5. (intransitive) To be an author.
    I write for a living.
  6. (computing, intransitive, with to) To record data mechanically or electronically.
    The computer writes to the disk faster than it reads from it.
  7. (transitive, South Africa, Canada, of an exam, a document, etc.) To fill in, to complete using words.
    I was very anxious to know my score after I wrote the test.
  8. To impress durably; to imprint; to engrave.
    truth written on the heart
  9. To make known by writing; to record; to prove by one's own written testimony; often used reflexively.
    • 1649, [John] Milton, [Eikonoklastes]  […], London: Printed by Matthew Simmons,  […], OCLC 1044608640 ↗:
      He who writes himself Martyr by his own inscription, is like an ill painter, who by writing on a shapeless picture which he hath drawn, is fain to tell passengers what shape it is, which else no man could imagine.
Conjugation