Copyists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals who produce duplicates of written materials; those engaged in the task of transcribing texts by hand; or professionals who specialize in reproducing documents and manuscripts for distribution or preservation purposes
2. People responsible for creating equivalent versions of written works; practitioners who manually reproduce texts as part of their occupation; or experts in duplicating documents for archival or publishing needs
3. Workers who generate replicas of written content; individuals dedicated to the manual transcription of literary pieces; or specialists focused on the reproduction of diverse written records for various uses

Etymology: "Copyist" is built from "copy" and the suffix "-ist," which English took from Latin "-ista," itself borrowed from Greek "-istēs." That Greek ending named a person who practises or is devoted to something, so it turned verbs into agent nouns: a "chemist" practises chemistry, a "copyist" practises copying. The suffix has a long road behind it. In Greek it grew out of forms like "-izein" (to do something) and "-istēs," and it passed through Latin and then Old French into Middle English, where it arrived as "-iste" and eventually settled into the form English uses today. The "copy" half came into English from Old French "copie," from Latin "copia," meaning abundance or plenty, a sense that survives in the word "copious." Because the ending attaches to so many roots, "copyist" fits neatly alongside older formations such as "artist" and "violinist," and it shows how English could add an agent ending to almost any noun or verb as needed.

Synonyms: transcribers, scribes, duplicators, reproducers, imitators

Antonyms: originals