coauthor

noun

co·​au·​thor (ˌ)kō-ˈȯ-thər 

variants or co-author

plural coauthors or co-authors

: one who collaborates with another person in authoring a literary or dramatic work, a document, a legislative bill, etc.

coauthors of many books and plays

the coauthors of new legislation

coauthor transitive verb

or co-author

coauthored or co-authored; coauthoring or co-authoring

… he coauthored legislation … requiring the publication on the Internet of the cost of all federal contracts, grants, and congressional "earmarks,"…

—Michael Tomasky

a co-authored book

coauthorship

(ˌ)kō-ˈȯ-thər-ˌship 

noun

or co-authorship

… accepting coauthorship on studies to which they did not significantly contribute.

—Mary Murray

Examples of coauthor in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

While the giant fungus has not been tested for toxins, some locals had even tasted it and reported no ill effects, said study coauthor Indunil Senanayake, an associate professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany in China. — Mindy Weisberger, CNN Money, 23 Oct. 2026

But David Neumark, a UC Irvine economist and coauthor of the PPIC study, said the findings indicate California could be ripe for a broad regulatory review. — Los Angeles Times, 22 Oct. 2026

Finding pain in a neural network Tagliabue and his coauthors, Leonard Dung of Ruhr University Bochum and Cameron Berg, founder and director of Reciprocal Research, started by writing short first-person sentences describing painful situations. — Shae Lake, Fortune, 22 Oct. 2026

Justin Wilson, an associate professor of physics at Louisiana State University and a study coauthor, explained that random interventions could suppress otherwise unpredictable behavior. — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 9 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1827, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for coauthor

• author

Kids Definition

coauthor

noun

co·​au·​thor

(ˈ)kō-ˈȯ-thər

: an author who works with another author