WRITE DOWN

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does write down mean? 

• WRITE DOWN (verb)
  The verb WRITE DOWN has 2 senses:

1. put down in writing; of texts, musical compositions, etc.

2. reduce the estimated value of something

  Familiarity information: WRITE DOWN used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WRITE DOWN (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Put down in writing; of texts, musical compositions, etc.

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

get down; put down; set down; write down

Hypernyms (to "write down" is one way to...):

write (communicate or express by writing)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "write down"):

transcribe (write out from speech, notes, etc.)

notate (put into notation, as of music or choreography)

dash down; dash off (write down hastily)

note; take down (make a written note of)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Sense 2

Meaning:

Reduce the estimated value of something

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

expense; write down; write off

Context example:

For tax purposes you can write off the laser printer

Hypernyms (to "write down" is one way to...):

depreciate (lower the value of something)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

write-down ((accounting) reduction in the book value of an asset)

 Context examples 

When I look over my bookshelves, I can see that it is only the wise and witty and valiant who have ventured to write down their experiences.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Try, pray do, to relent towards a miserable girl, and write down on a bit of paper whether he is well, and what he said about me before you left off ever naming me among yourselves—and whether, of a night, when it is my old time of coming home, you ever see him look as if he thought of one he used to love so dear.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I am kneeling down to you, begging and praying you not to be as hard with me as I deserve—as I well, well, know I deserve—but to be so gentle and so good, as to write down something of him, and to send it to me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The day may come when I shall write down all that I remember of the greatest battle ever fought upon salt water, and how my father’s gallant life was brought to an end as, with his paint rubbing against a French eighty-gun ship on one side and a Spanish seventy-four upon the other he stood eating an apple in the break of his poop.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I got to write down a list so I won't forget all the things I got to do.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)