- 1
An amanuensis is a person whose job is to write down what someone else is saying. In older times this was a real paid post: a scholar, a judge, or a busy letter-writer would speak, and the amanuensis would put the words on paper in a fair hand. It is a rare, rather word now. You meet it in history, in universities, and in jokes — someone may call a friend their amanuensis if that friend is always taking notes for them. It is not the same as a secretary who runs an office, and not quite a ghostwriter: the point is copying speech, not inventing the ideas. People stretch it a little for anyone who at another person's elbow, but the core picture is still “hands for hire, writing what is spoken.”
口授記錄者；書記（書面、罕見）
組成From Latin āmanuēnsis (“secretary”), built from ab- (“from, off”) + manus (“hand”) + -ensis (“of or from a place”). In English from the early 1600s. The Latin picture is a person “at the hand” of someone who needs writing done.
同家族的字
- manualshares Latin manus, “hand” — done with the hands
- manuscriptshares Latin manus — writing done by hand
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
amanuensisnoun/əˌmænjuˈɛnsɪs/
- 1
One employed to take dictation, or copy manuscripts.
- As pay was Lady Anne's object, and poor Georgiana was intended to be the amanuensis, should she be found capable of forming sentences out of disjointed hints, and of wrapping foul facts in clean composition.
- 2
A clerk, secretary or stenographer, or scribe.
- In consequence of this fashion of authors dictating their works, expedition came to be considered of the utmost importance; it was regarded as the chief accomplishment of an amanuensis; and he alone was considered as perfect in his art, whose pen could equal the rapidity of utterance: […]
- “[…] We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?[…]”
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。