Screenwriter

How to spell screenwriter

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce screenwriter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does screenwriter mean?

1. nounA person who writes the script for a film or television programme.

Screenwriter in a sentence

• The screenwriter spent two years drafting the script before filming began.

• As a freelance screenwriter, she pitched three projects to the studio.

Where does screenwriter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern English compound, joining 'screen' and 'writer', that arose with the film industry in the early twentieth century. The first element, 'screen', came into Middle English from Old French escren or escran, meaning a shield or partition, and originally described a movable panel that protected people from heat or draughts; only later did it come to mean the surface on which images are projected. The second element, 'writer', is a thoroughly native word built from the Old English verb writan, meaning 'to scratch, to draw, or to inscribe', a sense that recalls the days when letters were cut into wood or stone. When motion pictures created a new craft of composing stories for the screen, English simply welded the two familiar words together, with 'screenwriter' becoming common in Hollywood usage by the 1910s and 1920s. Because both halves are everyday words, the spelling is straightforward; the only trap is remembering it is a single closed compound with the double 'e' of screen meeting the agent ending of writer.

How the word is built

• screen (display surface, from Old French escren)
• writ (from Old English writan: to write)
• -er (agent suffix)