Scriptologist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A specialist in the study and analysis of handwriting and written text
2. A professional engaged in deciphering and interpreting scripts, often in historical contexts
3. An expert focused on the characteristics and styles of different writing systems and their applications

Etymology: A scriptologist studies writing systems, and the word is a plain modern formation: "script" combined with the suffix "-logist," from Greek "logos," meaning "study" or "discourse," as in "-logy" and "-logist" words generally. "Script" comes from Latin "scriptum," "something written," from "scribere," "to write." The pairing follows the familiar pattern of "biologist" or "geologist," where a suffix names a specialist in a field. The term is a recent coinage rather than an ancient one, and it does not appear in the classical Greek or Roman world, where no such specialty was named this way. Its formation reflects the growth of modern scholarship on writing systems, which drew scholars from linguistics, archaeology and palaeography together during the 19th and 20th centuries as decipherments of ancient scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Linear B advanced.