playwright » playwrite

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • A man who played a part of my youth passed away last week. It was playwrite Arthur Miller. Maybe his most famous play was “Death of a Salesman”. But the one that’s most important to me was “The Crucible”. (link)
  • The haunting story of playwrite Oakley Hall’s life and work, full of rich insights into the loss that occurs when a creative voice is suddenly silenced by tragedy. (Brandenton Herald, Jan. 23, 2005)
  • It follows the story of Barton Fink, played by John Tuturro, who is a playwrite who has a hit show in NY in 1941, which attracts the attention of Hollywood moguls. (link)
  • Barrie is working as a playwrite, a talented one who has not been able to grasp that story that captures the imagination of his audience. (Blogcritics.org)
  • Vision Theatre Players Guild presents the comedy “Trading Spaces” by local playwrite Anna Lussenburg Mar. 3, 4, 5 at the Cochrane RancheHouse. (Cochrane Times, January 26, 2005)

Analyzed or reported by:

Several major dictionaries define playwright laconically as “a person who writes plays”, which doesn’t help to clarify the matter for those who consult them.

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English explains:

A playwright, like a shipwright, makes or builds something (the word wright comes from an Old English form of worker and is related to wrought); to write plays is to do playwriting, although the playwrighting spelling also occurs. Edited English usually insists that a maker of plays is a playwright and that the craft be called playwriting, not playwrighting.

| link | entered by Chris W. (admin), 2005/02/23 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by Dan Hartung , 2005/02/25 at 3:42 am

    Of course, “copywrite”, as both noun and verb, is an even more common eggcorn (about 10x, per Google). I once pedantically pointed this out to a guy who was showing me the new program he had written (for the Apple II) with an animated demo scene beginning prominently displaying “copywritten by [that guy]”. It was the end of our cordial acquaintanceship.

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