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In this Adventure in Etymology we scratch at the roots of the word scribe.
Thoth, Egyptian god of the Moon, wisdom, knowledge, writing, science, magic, art and judgement, scribe of the gods, inventor of (Egyptian hieroglyphic) writing, reading and music
A scribe [skɹaɪ̯b] is someone who writes, a draughtsperson, a writer for another, a secretary, notary or copyist, and to scribe means to write, engrave, inscribe, record, and so on.
It comes from Middle English scribe (a public official who deals with writing or accounts, a clerk), from Old French scribe (scribe), from Late Latin scrība (writer, scribe, secretary, clerk), from Latin scrībō (to write), from Proto-Italic *skreiβō (to carve), from PIE *(s)kréybʰeti, from *(s)kreybʰ- (to scratch, tear) [source].
Words from the same roots may include schrijven (to write) and rijven (to rake, rasp, grate) in Dutch, scrie (to write) in Romanian, skriva (to write, type, copy) in Swedish, scríobh (to write, fill in, compose) in Irish, and écriture (writing, scripture) in French [source].
The English words scribble, script, scripture, describe, inscribe, prescribe, proscribe, transcribe, shrive (to hear or receive a confession [of sins, etc]), shrine also come from the same roots [source]. As does the word scrivener, which refers to a professional writer, particularly one whose occupation is to draw contracts or prepare writings, and used to mean a broker [source].
Incidentally, if you’re prone to excessive writing, you could be described as scribacious [source], and if you are a bad at transcribing, you could be called a transcribbler [source]
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I also write about words, etymology and other language-related topics on the Omniglot Blog, and I explore etymological connections between Celtic languages on the Celtiadur blog.