ethnographic

American  

[eth-nuh-graf-ik] / ˌɛθ nəˈgræf ɪk /

Rarely ethnographical

adjective

1. of or relating to ethnography, the branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual cultures.

   Ethnographic information indicates that trips to harvest wild hot peppers were important social and economic ventures among Apache peoples in the region.

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Other Word Forms

• ethnographically adverb

Etymology

Origin of ethnographic

ethno- ( def. ) + -graphic ( def. )

Explanation

Anything that describes a specific culture's customs, like a movie about a small village in China or a book about French Canadians, can be described as ethnographic. You're most likely to hear the word ethnographic in an anthropology class, since it's a scientific way to describe books, films, research, or lectures that have to do with the study of human societies and their customs. The word comes from two Greek roots, ethnos, or "people," and grapho, "to write." So if you write a paper about the customs of American teenagers in the 1980s, your work is ethnographic.

Example Sentences

He combined this with ethnographic data from 94 human societies worldwide, ranging from the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania to the rice-farming Toraja people of Indonesia.

From Science Daily • Jan. 22, 2026

It is the summation of the ethnographic fieldwork, bold hypotheses and sweeping synthesis unique to this scholar of rural resistance.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 12, 2025

Anthropologist Emma Tarlo, author of a richly detailed ethnographic work of the period, wrote that during the Emergency, the poor were subjected to "forced choices".

From BBC • Jun. 24, 2025

For Morin and his colleagues, the study was its own exercise in endurance: They spent more than 5 years exploring the ethnographic literature and other sources, surveying more than 8000 texts spanning about 500 years.

From Science Magazine • May 12, 2024

Such a hypothesis accords as well with the animism found in ethnographic societies the world over.

From "History of Art, Volume 1" by H.W. Janson