The common document term "manuscript" plays an irreplaceable role in cultural, administrative and other fields. This paper uses the methods of genetics, historical linguistics and quantitative linguistics to analyze the data from multiple databases. It is found that "Manuscript" appears relatively late among literary and documentary terms, and many variants are interchangeable. The prototype word "Wen gao" first appeared in Yunxi Youyi from the Tang Dynasty, denoting "text, article draft". When the term contains too many meanings, resulting in ambiguity, "manuscript" begins to combine with modifiers as a root word to form polysyllabic "manuscript" nouns to refer to specific things. In contemporary times, "manuscript" has combined with computers to evolve into digital manuscript-writing tools. "Manuscript" has become a highly professional, versatile, and widely used term in social life.