to write: to set words down in writing, and so to put something on lasting record
At its plainest the word covers the ordinary act of forming letters and words on a surface: a man writes a name on a tablet, a charge is written over a cross, an apostle takes up the pen to send a letter. From that simple act the word reaches in several directions. Because writing fixes words so they outlast the moment, it becomes the verb for composing a document and for entering a name in an official record.
Its heaviest use is the settled phrase "it is written." Here the verb stops describing the act and points to its result: words already set down and still standing. In the New Testament that phrase nearly always introduces the Hebrew Scriptures as the authority that decides a matter. The same logic lies behind names being written, or not written, in the book of life: what is written there stands, fixed and final.
The senses below are shades of one act, not different words. The thread running through all of them is permanence: writing turns passing speech into something that remains and can be appealed to later.