different between prescription vs precept

English

Alternative forms

• præscription (archaic)

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French, from Old French prescripcion, from Latin praescriptio.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p???sk??p??n/, (proscribed) /p??sk??p??n/

Noun

prescription (countable and uncountable, plural prescriptions)

1. (law)
   1. The act of prescribing a rule, law, etc..
      • "Jurisdiction to prescribe" is a state's authority to make its laws applicable to certain persons or activities. -- Richard G. Alexander, Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996: Congress exceeds its jurisdiction to prescribe law. Washington and Lee Law Review, 1997.
   2. Also called extinctive prescription or liberative prescription. A time period within which a right must be exercised, otherwise it will be extinguished.
   3. Also called acquisitive prescription. A time period after which a person who has, in the role of an owner, uninterruptedly, peacefully, and publicly possessed another's property acquires the property. The described process is known as acquisition by prescription and adverse possession.
2. (medicine, pharmacy, pharmacology) A written order, as by a physician or nurse practitioner, for the administration of a medicine or other intervention. See also scrip.
   • The surgeon wrote a prescription for a pain killer and physical therapy.
3. (medicine) The prescription medicine or intervention so prescribed.
   • The pharmacist gave her a bottle containing her prescription.
4. (ophthalmology) The formal description of the lens geometry needed for spectacles, etc..
   • The optician followed the optometrist's prescription for her new eyeglasses.
5. (linguistics) The act or practice of laying down norms of language usage, as opposed to description, i.e. recording and describing actual usage.
6. (linguistics) An instance of a prescriptive pronouncement.
7. A plan or procedure to obtain a given end result; a recipe.
   • "Early to bed and early to rise" is a prescription for a healthy lifestyle.
8. (obsolete) Circumscription; restraint; limitation.
   • 1853, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch 2:

     There is an air of prescription about him which is always agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of tribute. ... It expresses, as it were, the steward of the legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the Dedlocks.

Usage notes

• Do not confuse with proscription.

Synonyms

• forescript
• (medicine): ?, Rx
• (a plan or procedure): recipe

Related terms

• prescribe

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

prescription (not comparable)

1. (of a drug, etc.) only available with a physician or nurse practitioner's written prescription

   Many powerful pain killers are prescription drugs in the U.S.

Translations

See also

• prescriptivism

French

Etymology

From Old French prescripcion, borrowed from Latin praescriptio, praescriptionem.

Pronunciation

Noun

prescription f (plural prescriptions)

1. prescription (all senses)

Norman

Etymology

From Old French prescripcion, borrowed from Latin praescriptio, praescriptionem.

Noun

prescription f (plural prescriptions)

1. (Jersey) prescription

English

Alternative forms

• præcept (obsolete)

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin praeceptum, form of praecipi? (“to teach”), from Latin prae (“pre-”) + capi? (“take”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?i?s?pt/

Noun

precept (plural precepts)

1. A rule or principle, especially one governing personal conduct.
   • 2006: Theodore Dalrymple, The Gift of Language

     I need hardly point out that Pinker doesn't really believe anything of what he writes, at least if example is stronger evidence of belief than precept.
2. (law) A written command, especially a demand for payment.
3. (Britain) An order issued by one local authority to another specifying the rate of tax to be charged on its behalf.
   1. A rate or tax set by a precept.

Translations

Verb

precept (third-person singular simple present precepts, present participle precepting, simple past and past participle precepted)

1. (obsolete) To teach by precepts.
   • 1603, Francis Bacon, Valerius Terminus: Of The Interpretation of Nature

     the axioms of sciences are precepted to be made convertible

References

• “precept”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.

Anagrams

• percept

Old Irish

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin praeceptum, form of praecipi? (“to teach”), from prae (“pre-”) + capi? (“take”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?r?e??ept/

Noun

precept f (genitive precepte)

1. verbal noun of pridchaid
   • c. 800, Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 499–712, Wb. 10^d23

   • c. 800, Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 499–712, Wb. 21^c19

Inflection

Mutation

Further reading

• Gregory Toner, Maire Ní Mhaonaigh, Sharon Arbuthnot, Dagmar Wodtko, Maire-Luise Theuerkauf, editors (2019) , “precept”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

Romanian

Etymology

From French précepte, from Latin praeceptum.

Noun

precept n (plural precepte)

1. precept

Declension