Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who is employed to take dictation or to copy manuscript.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A person whose employment is to write what another dictates, or to copy what has been written by another.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A person whose employment is to write what another dictates, or to copy what another has written.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One employed to take dictation, or copy manuscripts
  • noun A clerk, secretary or stenographer, or scribe.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone skilled in the transcription of speech (especially dictation)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin āmanuēnsis, from the phrase (servus) ā manū, (slave) at handwriting : ā, ab, by; see ab– + manū, ablative of manus, hand; see man- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin āmanuēnsis ("secretary"), from ab + manus, "by hand".

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Examples

Comments

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  • What an ugly-looking word. That "nuen," in particular, is killing me.

    March 26, 2007

  • In Norway, amanuensis is an academic rank of a lecturer without a doctorate, and this title is going out of use. Førsteamanuensis (Norwegian for "first amanuensis") is the equivalent of associate professor.

    December 24, 2008

  • It's interesting that the "related words" function is not symmetric. alguacil shows up as being related to amanuensis, but amanuensis is not listed as being related to alguacil.

    August 12, 2011