scribo

Scribo, scribere, scripsi, scriptum, third conjugation. The original sense is to scratch or incise, which is what a stylus does to a wax tablet, and the word never quite loses the physical edge. In the perfect the b hardens to p before the -s-, giving scripsi; the same swap happens in nubo, nupsi.

Two idioms carry most of the weight in this corpus. Scriptum est, "it is written", is the standard formula for scriptural authority, and litteras scribere ad aliquem is how you write to somebody, with ad and the accusative rather than a dative. The distinction to keep is between scribo, the physical act, and compono, putting the words together. Family: scriptor, scriptura, describo, praescribo, subscribo, conscribo. English scribe, script, scripture, describe, prescription, subscribe, manuscript; French écrire, Spanish escribir.