Prescription or proscription?
prescription is a noun meaning “A written order from an authorized medical practitioner for provision of a…”; proscription is a noun meaning “A prohibition”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) prescription is about 105 times as common as proscription.
What is the difference between prescription and proscription?
| prescription | proscription | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | A written order from an authorized medical practitioner for provision of a medicine or other treatment, such as (ophthalmology) the specific lenses needed for… The medicine or treatment provided by such an order | A prohibition Decree of condemnation toward one or more persons, especially in the Roman antiquity |
| Example | The surgeon had written thousands of prescriptions for pain killers without proper examinations before the police raided the clinic | none recorded |
| Forms | prescriptions | proscriptions |
| Pronunciation | /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/ /pɝˈskɹɪp.ʃən/ | /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/ /pɹoʊˈskɹɪp.ʃən/ |
| In writing | 10 times per million words | about once in every 10 million words |
Sources: prescription and proscription in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of prescription and proscription
prescription
- 1
A written order from an authorized medical practitioner for provision of a medicine or other treatment, such as (ophthalmology) the specific lenses needed for a pair of glasses
The surgeon had written thousands of prescriptions for pain killers without proper examinations before the police raided the clinic
- 2
The medicine or treatment provided by such an order
I need you to pick up gramma's prescriptions on your way home
- 3
Any plan of treatment or handling; the treatment or handling thus provided
Early to bed and early to rise is a prescription for a long, healthy, and terrible life
- 4
Synonym of enactment, the act of establishing a law, regulation, etc., particularly in writing; an instance of this
- 5
The act of establishing or formalizing ideal norms for language use, as opposed to describing the actual norms of such use; an instance of this
- 6
An established time period within which a right must be exercised and after which it is null and permanently unenforceable
- 7
An established time period after which a person who has uninterruptedly, peacefully, and publicly used another's property acquires full ownership of it
proscription
- 1
A prohibition
- 2
Decree of condemnation toward one or more persons, especially in the Roman antiquity
- 3
The act of proscribing, or its result
- 4
A decree or law that prohibits
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, prescription or proscription?
prescription appears 10 times per million words; proscription about once in every 10 million words.
prescription 10 times per million wordsproscription about once in every 10 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search prescription vs proscription?
“prescription vs proscription” is searched about 20 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.