cartography
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of cartography
Explanation
Have you ever tried to draw a map of your neighborhood? If you’re drawing your map to scale, taking into account every little hill and valley, you can appreciate the challenge of cartography, the science of making maps. You may think cartography has gone the way of the dodo bird, now that we’ve got Google maps and GPS devices. You don’t have to draw maps by hand anymore, but you still need cartography skills to turn digital representations into something people can use with ease. While the word cartography dates only from the mid-19th century, maps were around for a long, long time before that. Cartography comes from the French carte, “map,” and -graphie, “writing.”
Vocabulary lists containing cartography
Write On!: Graph and Gram
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Human Geography - Middle School
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Human Geography - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Emma Brown is a graphics reporter focusing on cartography at the Wall Street Journal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 25, 2026
Throughout the book, elements from a talking fish to a possibly reincarnated dog exist alongside the bleak reality of a country so downtrodden and occupied that even its cartography isn’t in its own language.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 30, 2026
The Seattle-based cartography company turns 50 this year, providing proof as clear as the compass rose that the hard-copy map is not going the way of the phone book.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 30, 2023
The H3 rocket was carrying an advanced land observation satellite, with plans to use the satellite, lost along with the rocket, to collect data for disaster response and cartography.
From Washington Times ● Mar. 7, 2023
He taught surveying, navigation, cartography and military engineering.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
