Cartographie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The art or practice of mapping geographical features and locations accurately
2. The science of representing the Earth's surface and its characteristics through maps
3. A discipline that involves the design and creation of maps to illustrate spatial relationships and data

Etymology: The first half of "cartographie" goes back to the Greek "khartēs," a sheet of papyrus, which the Romans borrowed as "charta." That same Latin root lies behind English "chart," and, by a longer route through Old French "carte," behind "card," so a playing card and a map share an ancestor: a flat sheet to write on. The ending comes from the Greek "graphia," "writing," from "graphein," "to write," the same element in "graph," "biography," and "photograph." Put together, "carte" and "-graphie" describe the writing of sheets, the work of recording land and sea on paper. The compound is built on a Greek suffix to a French stem, so it is a French formation rather than a classical Greek word, even though every piece of it traces back to Greek and Latin.

Synonyms: cartography, mapmaking, charting