Scripted

How to spell scripted

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scripted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scripted mean?

1. adjectivePrepared or written out in advance rather than spoken spontaneously.
2. verbWrote the text or dialogue for a play, film, or planned exchange.

Scripted in a sentence

• adjective

  The chief executive read from a tightly scripted statement.

• verb

  A small team scripted every line of the documentary in advance.

• adjective

  The so-called spontaneous moment was clearly scripted for the cameras.

• verb

  She scripted the customer service responses to keep the tone consistent.

Where does scripted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin scriptum, meaning 'something written', the neuter past participle of scribere, 'to write'. That same root gave English a whole family of writing words, including 'scribe', 'describe', 'manuscript', and 'subscription'. The noun 'script' entered English in the late medieval period to mean handwriting or a written document, and by the early twentieth century it had taken on the theatrical sense of the written text of a play or film. The adjective and verb 'scripted' followed naturally, describing words prepared in advance rather than spoken spontaneously. The single 't' before the '-ed' is the small trap here: because the base 'script' already ends in 't', writers sometimes hesitate over the ending, but it is simply script plus -ed.

How the word is built

• script (from Latin scriptum: something written)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)