Sunday Times 4943

[barnaclebill58]

Doing things for an author. Ans was given on here as "Agent nouns" but no explanation was given.
An explanation was given on another site as "Wikipedia explains, “In linguistics, an agent noun is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action, and that identifies an entity that does that action,” giving the example of driver, from drive. Now, an author doesn’t auth, nor is someone who authors an authorer. “Author,” however, ultimately comes to us—via Middle French as relayed from Old French—from the Latin noun auctor, which is composed of auct-, the past passive participle stem of augēre (“to increase”) + -or, the agent noun suffix."

The final sentence beginning "Author , however , ... "makes no sense to me and surely the explanation can't rely on Middle and Old French . Can anyone please come up with a clearer explanation ?

[Eagledave]

My take was that the reference to author was just someone who uses English language and when they are writing “doing things” they use agent nouns

[novalis]

That was my take on it as well Eagledave.