topographer

[tuh-pog-ruh-fer]

noun

1. a specialist in topography.

2. a person who describes the surface features of a place or region.

Word History and Origins

Origin of topographer¹

1595–1605; < Greek topográph ( os ) topographer ( topo-, -graph ) + -er ¹

Example Sentences

As the 16th-century French topographer Pierre Gilles observed, the Bosporus “is the first creator of Byzantium, greater and more important than Byzas,” the founder of Byzantium.

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Thinking it would make a good triangulation point, he sent his chief topographer and two assistants to set up a survey station on its peak in the dry heat of a July morning.

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When I had told Miss Jiménez, my teacher in Macún, she had said I was more of a topographer, because cartographers’ maps were flat, while mine had the bumps and dips of mountain ranges and valleys.

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When I was older, I wanted to be a cartographer, then a topographer.

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To remedy this, Grosvenor hired topographer Albert Bumstead, who had recently mapped the region around the newly discovered Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, to establish the Society’s cartography department in 1915.

Read more on National Geographic

Related Words

• assessor 
• cartographer