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Get Wordy With Verbatim
As every bona fide word nerd knows, English is rich with Latin descendants. While most have undergone changes in spelling, some are the same—in other words, they are spelled verbatim. We won't list examples of such ad nauseam, but a few include caveat, ego, vice versa and, of course, verbatim. This last word comes to us from the Medieval Latin word verbātim which also means "word for word." As you may have noticed, there’s a verb in verbatim, and that’s no mere coincidence. Both verb and verbatim come from verbum, the Latin word for "word." The influence of verbum can be seen in other common English words such as proverb, verbose, adverb, et cetera. And speaking of adverbs, verbatim isn’t just an adverb; it’s also used as an adjective to mean "being in or following the exact words" (as in "a verbatim report") and on rare occasions as a noun referring to an account, translation, or report that follows the original word for word.
Synonyms
Examples of verbatim in a Sentence
Sally B. Donnelly et al., Time, 20 Mar. 2006
Some passages in the book are taken verbatim from the blog …
—Publishers Weekly, 13 June 2005
Around his eleventh year he compiled a sort of commonplace book in which he transcribed passages from his reading. … But these entries aren't rendered verbatim: [Arthur] Rimbaud expands and contracts his sources, plays with lines, exhibiting a very early, very organic sort of literary criticism.
—Wyatt Mason, Harper's, October 2002
"My own anxieties about mortality are tempered just slightly," says [Ken] Burns (quoting, almost verbatim, his introduction to "Jazz's" companion coffee-table book), "by the notion that if we continue to try hard, we'll have a chance to hear Louis blow Gabriel out of the clouds."
—David Gates, Newsweek, 8 Jan. 2001
you can't just copy the encyclopedia article verbatim for your report—that's plagiarism
Adjective
Was Coleridge's "Table Talk," as recorded by his circle, his words or theirs—or a conflation of both? And what about Boswell, the most celebrated auditor of them all, who composed a masterpiece of English literature out of the supposedly verbatim speech of Samuel Johnson? Did Johnson begin his every declaration with an orotund "Sir?"
—James Atlas, New York Times Magazine, 23 June 1991
Some readers may unfortunately be made mistrustful of the authors' findings by their attempts to enliven the book with unverifiable—if inconsequential—details about the settings of events and by occasionally presenting unrecorded conversations of four decades ago in the form of verbatim quotations.
—Henry Ashby Turner, New York Times Book Review, 22 June 1986
David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 22 Oct. 2024
According to Leonardi, there were many other times when segments weren’t executed verbatim, with the talent going slightly off script.
—Krystie Lee Yandoli, Rolling Stone, 19 Oct. 2024
Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 8 Nov. 2024
While including on-the-ground reporting of the war’s casualties, Al Jazeera’s Arabic arm often publishes verbatim video statements from Hamas and other regional militant groups.
—Jon Gambrell, Los Angeles Times, 22 Sep. 2024
See all Example Sentences for verbatim 
Dictionary Entries Near verbatim
Cite this Entry
“Verbatim.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verbatim. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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