Prescribed

How to spell prescribed

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce prescribed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prescribed mean?

1. verbOfficially recommended or ordered a medicine, treatment, or course of action, or laid down a rule or method to be followed.

Prescribed in a sentence

• The doctor prescribed a course of antibiotics for the infection.

• The manual prescribed the exact steps for shutting down the machine safely.

Where does prescribed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past form of 'prescribe', which descends from the Latin verb praescribere, literally 'to write before' or 'to write at the beginning'. It was built from prae, meaning 'before', and scribere, meaning 'to write', the same root that gives us 'scribe', 'script', and 'describe'. In Roman usage praescribere came to mean issuing a written rule or directing something in advance, and that sense of an authoritative written instruction carried into English in the 1400s. From there it split into two everyday meanings: a doctor formally orders a medicine, and a rule or limit is laid down. A useful spelling note is that the visible 'scrib' element keeps the link to writing, while the easily confused near-twin 'proscribed' begins with pro- ('forbid') and means almost the opposite.

How the word is built

• pre- (before, beforehand)
• scrib (write)
• -ed (past tense suffix)