prescribe

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
prescribe/prɪˈskrʌɪb/

▶verb

• 1 advise and authorize the use of (a medicine or treatment), especially in writing.

  ■ recommend as beneficial.

• 2 state authoritatively that (something) should be done in a particular way.

– derivatives
prescribable adjective,
prescriber noun.

– origin ME (in the senses ‘confine within bounds, claim by prescription’): from L. praescribere ‘direct in writing’, from prae ‘before’ + scribere ‘write’.

usage: The verbs prescribe and proscribe do not have the same meaning. Prescribe is a much commoner word and means either ‘issue a medical prescription’ or ‘recommend with authority’, as in the doctor prescribed antibiotics. Proscribe, on the other hand, means ‘condemn or forbid’, as in gambling was strictly proscribed by the authorities.