Definition of "manuscript"

manuscript

/ˈmæn.jʊˌskɹɪpt/

adjective
not comparable
1. Handwritten, or by extension manually typewritten, as opposed to being mechanically reproduced.
noun
plural manuscripts
1. A book, composition or any other document, written by hand (or manually typewritten), not mechanically reproduced.
  Quotations
  In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, […], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned.
  1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
  The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, […] . Scribes, illuminators, and scholars held such stones directly over manuscript pages as an aid in seeing what was being written, drawn, or read.
  2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist
2. A single, original copy of a book, article, composition etc, written by hand or even printed, submitted as original for (copy-editing and) reproductive publication.