What does "write" mean?

1. (to form letters) to make letters, numbers, or symbols on a surface like paper or a screen. 2. (to be an author) to create a book, story, poem, or article. 3. (to send a message) to send a letter or email to someone. 4. (to record data) to save information onto a computer disk or memory. 5. (to sell an option) to sell a financial contract like an option. 6. (storing data) the act of saving data on a computer.

write — meaning, definition & examples

Q: Is it correct to say "I wrote it with a pencil."?

No — say "I wrote it in pencil.". Use 'in' for the medium (ink, pencil, chalk) and 'with' for the specific tool (a pen, a blue marker).

Word

Infinitive

write

Past

wrote

Past participle

written

01to form letters

A1 · Beginner

v. to make letters, numbers, or symbols on a surface like paper or a screen.

v. to form characters, symbols, or words on a substrate such as paper or a digital interface.

“Please write your name at the top of the page.”

“The student wrote the equations on the whiteboard, carefully ensuring each symbol was legible for the rest of the class to follow.”

Pitfall

I wrote it with a pencil.

I wrote it in pencil.

Use 'in' for the medium (ink, pencil, chalk) and 'with' for the specific tool (a pen, a blue marker).

Synonyms

inscribescrawljot

Antonyms

erase delete

02to be an author

A1 · Beginner

v. to create a book, story, poem, or article.

v. to compose a literary, artistic, or journalistic work as its author.

“She wants to write a novel about her travels in Asia.”

“After years of research, the historian finally began to write his definitive biography of the revolutionary leader.”

Synonyms

compose author pen

03to send a message

A1 · Beginner

v. to send a letter or email to someone.

v. to communicate with someone by sending a written or electronic message.

“I will write to you as soon as I arrive at the hotel.”

“The manager promised to write the client immediately to clarify the terms of the new agreement.”

Usage

In British English, you 'write to someone'; in American English, you can simply 'write someone'.

Synonyms

correspond message

04to record data

B2 · Upper Intermediate Computing Technical

v. to save information onto a computer disk or memory.

v. to record data onto a storage medium or memory location.

“The computer is writing the files to the external drive now.”

“The system failed because it could not write the log files to the disk due to insufficient permissions.”

Synonyms

save record store

Antonyms

read

05to sell an option

C1 · Advanced Finance Technical · Formal

v. to sell a financial contract like an option.

v. to sell an options contract or other derivative, thereby taking on the obligation to fulfill its terms.

“He decided to write a covered call option to earn extra income.”

“Institutional investors often write options to hedge their existing portfolios against sudden market volatility.”

Synonyms

sell issue

Antonyms

buy

06storing data

C1 · Advanced Countable noun Computing Technical

n. the act of saving data on a computer.

n. the process or operation of recording data to a storage device.

“The error occurred during a disk write.”

“The application performance was bottlenecked by the high frequency of random writes to the database.”

Synonyms

storage recording

Antonyms

read

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 cut, scratch, 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 adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

VERB

rewrite(B1)

write(A1)

NOUN

writer(A1)

writing(A1)