Copyright

Provoked this morning to inquire this morning about copyright. Should it be 'write' or 'right'?

First thought was that 'right' was right. Second thought was that it was all about writing out a copy of something, a something that really belonged to somebody else. So 'write' was right.

Off to Webster's, where right was right. Which is all very well, said BH, but that is an American dictionary where they do things different. So off to OED, where right was still right. And where the word is given around four columns spread over two pages. With three of those columns being given to the noun, arranged in six clusters of meaning. With a nice ambiguity in that a copy might be either the result of making a copy or that which is copied.

There is, however, the modern usage of copywriter, a person who writes the copy, the person who writes the words for advertisements, present as a one-liner in Webster's but absent from OED - this despite this last being compiled well after the explosion of advertising in the second half of the nineteenth century.

PS: none of which is to be confused with the famous chorus about rights in Gilbert's Mikado. For which see reference 1.

References

Reference 1: https://genius.com/Gilbert-and-sullivan-our-great-mikado-virtuous-man-lyrics.