Meaning & use

scrivener

noun·Advanced

A person, especially in earlier times, employed to copy documents by hand or draw up legal papers.

See it in a sentence

The scrivener carefully copied the contract by hand before the invention of the printing press.

In the story, a quiet scrivener working in a law office refuses to do any more copying.

A note on using this word

Scrivener is now a historical or literary term, best known today from Herman Melville's story Bartleby, the Scrivener.

Words with a similar meaning

scribecopyist

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

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