apograph

English

WOTD – 22 August 2011

From Ancient Greek ἀπόγραφον (apógraphon), from ἀπογράφω (apográphō, “I copy”), from ἀπό (apó, “off, away from”) + γράφω (gráphō, “write”).

apograph (plural apographs)

(textual criticism) A copy or transcript of a manuscript (called the antigraph).
- 1962, Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire:
  Moreover, this is not a holograph but an apograph, made by a scribe for the printers – you will note that both mayors write the same hand.
- 1989, William Veder, Texts of Closed Tradition – The Key to the Manuscript Heritage of Old Rus’:
  For both C and R, as well as for all other corpora of Slavic manuscripts, including I and L, it has always been tacitly assumed that the scribe did not merely copy, but verified the text of his apograph via his own pronunciation (externally or internally), or even wrote upon dictation.

perfect copy