Prescribing

How to spell prescribing

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce prescribing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prescribing mean?

1. verbRecommending or authorising a particular medicine or treatment, typically in writing, for a patient.
2. verbStating officially and with authority that something must be done or followed.

Prescribing in a sentence

• The doctor is prescribing a stronger course of antibiotics this time.

• The new regulations are prescribing exactly how the data must be stored.

• Some clinics are now prescribing regular exercise alongside medication.

• The style guide goes too far in prescribing which words employees may use.

Where does prescribing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb praescribere, which literally meant 'to write before' or 'to write at the head', formed from prae 'before' and scribere 'to write'. In Roman usage it carried the sense of writing something down as a directive or laying down a rule in advance, which is exactly how the modern legal and authoritative meaning survives. English took it up in the 1500s, and the medical sense, a physician 'writing out' instructions or a remedy for a patient, grew naturally from that idea of putting orders down in writing. The same scribere root sits visibly inside 'describe', 'scribe', 'manuscript', and 'subscribe', which is a useful anchor for the spelling. The trap for writers is twofold: the unstressed first syllable can be misheard as 'pro', and prescribing (to recommend or order) is easily confused with proscribing (to forbid), even though their meanings are nearly opposite.

How the word is built

• pre- (before)
• scrib (from Latin scribere, to write)
• -ing (present participle / gerund)