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author

noun

Simple meaning

Someone who writes books for a living.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

awther

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈɔθɚ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. Writes (books or stories or articles or the like) professionally (for pay)

  2. Someone who writes books for a living.

  3. The originator or creator of a work, especially of a literary composition; or, one of the creators of a collaborative work.

  4. Someone who originates or causes or initiates something

  5. US copyright law

    The initial owner of the copyright to a work, especially a work made for hire or a work of corporate authorship.

  6. figurative

    The creator or cause of anything.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Writes (books or stories or articles or the like) professionally (for pay)

Used this way, author is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use author

  • “The author wrote a captivating book that I highly recommend.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

present authorauthor indexfirst authoranonymous author

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • authoring languagenounCompound term

    Software that can be used to develop interactive computer programs without the technically demanding task of computer programming.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • author's namenounRelated term

    The name that appears on the by-line to identify the author of a work.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: writes (books or stories or articles

writer

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.