Paleographic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. The field dedicated to investigating historical scripts entails analyzing the evolution and styles of writing in ancient documents
2. This area of research focuses on the interpretation and understanding of writing systems found in old manuscripts
3. The study of ancient writing forms involves examining the history, styles, and characteristics of scripts used in historical documents

Etymology: "Paleographic" is a plain formation rather than a story with a famous coiner: it combines "paleo-", from Greek "palaios" meaning "old" or "ancient", with "-graphic", the adjectival form of "graph", from Greek "graphein", "to write." The adjective is therefore literally "relating to ancient writing," and the Greek elements were joined in the same way as in related scholarly terms built from classical roots. The word grows out of "paleography," the noun for the study of old handwriting and scripts. That noun sits on the same Greek base, so "paleographic" is simply the adjective used to describe anything concerning that field, from a manuscript's letter forms to the methods scholars use to date them. The "-ic" ending is the common English adjective suffix that turns the noun into a descriptor.