Transcription

How to spell transcription

13 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce transcription

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transcription mean?

1. nounA written or printed version of spoken words, or the act of producing one.
2. nounThe biological process by which a sequence of DNA is copied into messenger RNA.

Transcription in a sentence

• The court provided a full transcription of the witness testimony.

• The lecture explained how transcription converts a gene into a strand of RNA.

• She earns a living doing audio transcription for medical clinics.

• Certain proteins regulate the transcription of specific genes inside the cell.

Where does transcription come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin transcriptio, a noun built on the verb transcribere, which combined trans, meaning 'across' or 'over', with scribere, meaning 'to write'. The literal sense was therefore 'to write over' or 'to copy out from one place to another', exactly the act of reproducing a written text. English took it in by way of Old French in the medieval period, when scribes copying manuscripts by hand were the chief users of such a word. The same scribere root sits inside a whole family of everyday relatives, including 'describe', 'manuscript', 'subscribe', and 'scripture', and noticing that shared 'scrip' core is the surest way to remember the spelling. Later the meaning broadened beyond copying letters to include rendering speech or music into written form, and in biology it came to name the process by which DNA is copied into RNA.

How the word is built

• trans- (across)
• scrib/script (to write)
• -tion (noun of action)