geschrift

Geschrift is a German noun that historically denotes “writing” or “a script.” It is rarely used in everyday modern German and is mainly encountered in historical, philological, or palaeographic contexts. In older texts Geschrift can function as a near-synonym of Schrift or Handschrift and is sometimes used to refer to a corpus of writings or to the act of writing itself, especially when describing manuscript culture or the development of scripts.

The word appears to be formed from Schrift with the prefixed Ge-, a pattern seen in several archaic or regional variants of German. Its precise attestation is limited and it is generally regarded as obsolete or dialectal in contemporary dictionaries.

In current scholarly usage, Geschrift may appear in discussions about medieval manuscripts, where distinctions between different kinds of writing (for example, a script versus a copy or a text) are relevant. In standard contemporary German, however, writers typically use Schrift, Handschrift, or Manuskript to convey the same notions.

See also: Schrift, Handschrift, Manuskript, Palaeographie, Schriftkunde.