transcription

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin trānscrīptiō (“a transcription, transfer”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} which Etymonline and the Shorter Oxford call Late Latin,^[7][3] and partly borrowed from French transcription,^{[7][2][3][6][8]} recorded in French from the 16th century.^[2] The Latin noun is a noun of action from trānscrīptus, the past participle of trānscrībō (“to copy, write again elsewhere, transfer”),^[2][7][3][8] the source of transcribe, formed from trāns- (“across, over”) and scrībō (“to write”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action of copying: 1598, in Florio's dictionary A Worlde of Wordes.^[2][4] Etymonline also dates the sense "act of copying" to the 1590s.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) defined it simply as "the act of copying".^[9] The product of copying, a transcript, is recorded from 1649 (Etymonline: 1640s),^[2][7] and in Roman law the word was used from 1677 for the transfer of a debt.^[2] The 19th century added the arrangement of a piece of music for another voice or instrument, first recorded in Webster's dictionary of 1864,^[2][4] and transliteration (1870).^[2] The 20th century brought recordings: a gramophone record made from a secondary source (1931) and a recording of a broadcast for later use (1932).^[2] The biological sense, the copying of the genetic information in DNA into RNA, dates from 1961.^[2][7]

Timeline

• 1598 – the action of copying.^[2][4]
• 1649 – a copy, a transcript.^[2]
• 1677 – in Roman law, the transfer of a debt.^[2]
• 1864 – in music, an arrangement for another instrument or voice.^[2]
• 1870 – transliteration.^[2]
• 1931 – a gramophone record made from a secondary source.^[2]
• 1932 – a recording of a broadcast.^[2]
• 1961 – in biology, the copying of DNA into RNA.^[2][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act or process of transcribing something: The transcription of the interviews took weeks.^[10][4][2]
2. Something transcribed; a written or printed copy, a transcript.^[10][4][2]
3. A written representation of speech in phonetic symbols, or of a word in another script.^[10][2]
4. (music) An arrangement of a piece for an instrument or voice other than the original one.^[4][2]
5. (broadcasting) A recording made for later broadcast.^[4][2]
6. (biology) The process by which the genetic information in DNA is copied into RNA.^[2][7]

Word family

• transcriptional
• transcriptionally
• transcriptionist
• mistranscription
• pretranscription
• retranscription

Related words

• transcribe
• transcript

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins