WRITER'S CRAMP • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Writer's cramp

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/rˈaɪtərz kræmp/ Listen

noun

Writer n.

One who writes, or has written; a scribe; a clerk. "They (came) that handle the pen of the writer." "My tongue is the pen of a ready writer."

One who is engaged in literary composition as a profession; an author; as, a writer of novels. "This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile."

A clerk of a certain rank in the service of the late East India Company, who, after serving a certain number of years, became a factor.

Writer of the tallies (Eng. Law), an officer of the exchequer of England, who acted as clerk to the auditor of the receipt, and wrote the accounts upon the tallies from the tellers' bills. The use of tallies in the exchequer has been abolished.

Writer's cramp, Writer's palsy or Writer's spasm (Med.), a painful spasmodic affection of the muscles of the fingers, brought on by excessive use, as in writing, violin playing, telegraphing, etc. Called also scrivener's palsy.

Writer to the signet. See under Signet.

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Etymology of 'Writer's cramp'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Writer's cramp" Quotes from Famous Books

... alarmed, my dear boy, at the change for the worse in my handwriting. I am suffering for my devotion to the studious habits of a lifetime: my right hand is attacked by the malady called Writer's Cramp. The doctor here can do nothing. He tells me of some foreign woman, mentioned in his newspaper, who cures nervous derangements of all kinds by hand-rubbing, and who is coming to London. When you next hear from me, I may be in London too."—There ...

— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... thus, which must have caused greater muscular labour in execution. Let any one try the two methods for himself. Dickens was fond of flourishes, as witness his first published autograph, under the portrait which was issued with Nicholas Nickleby (1839). Some evidence of "writer's cramp," as it is termed, appears where the C in Charles becomes almost a G, and where the line-like flourishes to the signature thirty years later, under the portrait forming the frontispiece to Edwin Drood, are much shorter and less elaborate. All the earlier manuscripts are in black ink—the characteristic ...

— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... run down to see the happy couple. Vida was now looking a good forty, but Clyde was actually looking younger than ever; not a line nor a wrinkle to show how he had grieved for her, and not a sign of writer's cramp from these three picture cards he had sent her in five years. She'd been afraid he'd come back worn ...

— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... my desk and transacted routine business all afternoon, working with feverish energy. Like a man on the verge of a critical illness or a hazardous journey, I cleared up my correspondence, paid bills until I had writer's cramp from signing checks, read over my will, and paid up my life insurance, made to the benefit of an elderly sister of my mother's. I no longer dreaded arrest. After that morning in the station, I felt that anything would be a relief from the tension. I went home with perfect openness, courting ...

— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... "Perhaps it's writer's cramp," said Cleggett, indulging the pleasant humor that was on him. He was really thinking that, with $500,000 of his own, he had written his last headline, edited his last piece of ...

— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis