Write
Old English wrītan ‘score, form (letters) by carving, write’, of Germanic origin; related to German reissen ‘sketch, drag’.
wiktionary
From Middle English writen, from Old English wrītan(“to incise, engrave, write, draw, bestow by writing”), from Proto-West Germanic *wrītan, from Proto-Germanic *wrītaną(“to carve, write”), from Proto-Indo-European *wrey-(“to rip, tear”). Cognate with West Frisian write(“to wear by rubbing, rip, tear”), Dutch wrijten(“to argue, quarrel”), Middle Low German wrîten(“to scratch, draw, write”) (> Low German wrieten, rieten(“to tear, split”)), German reißen(“to tear, rip”), Norwegian rita(“to rough-sketch, carve, write”), Swedish rita(“to draw, design, delineate, model”), Icelandic rita(“to cut, scratch, write”), German ritzen(“to carve, scratch”), Proto-Slavic *ryti(“to carve, engrave, dig”), Polish ryć(“to engrave, dig”), Czech rýt(“to engrave, dig”). See also rit and rat.
etymonline
write (v.)
Old English writan "to score, outline, draw the figure of," later "to set down in writing" (class I strong verb; past tense wrat, past participle writen), from Proto-Germanic *writan "tear, scratch" (source also of Old Frisian writa "to write," Old Saxon writan "to tear, scratch, write," Old Norse rita "write, scratch, outline," Old High German rizan "to write, scratch, tear," German reißen "to tear, pull, tug, sketch, draw, design"), outside connections doubtful.
For men use to write an evill turne in marble stone, but a good turne in the dust. [More, 1513]
Words for "write" in most Indo-European languages originally mean "carve, scratch, cut" (such as Latin scribere, Greek graphein, glyphein, Sanskrit rikh-); a few originally meant "paint" (Gothic meljan, Old Church Slavonic pisati, and most of the modern Slavic cognates). To write (something) off (1680s) originally was from accounting; figurative sense is recorded from 1889. Write-in "unlisted candidate" is recorded from 1932.
