Skip to content
WordPith

GRAPH: the Greek root meaning “write”

GRAPH comes from Greek and means “write”. You can see it in autograph, biography and geography. WordPith uses it in 24 words.

Meaning
write
Origin
Greek
Type
Root
Also spelled
GRAM
Word lists
Core Roots, MCAT / NCLEX / UCAT, Medical Terms, Space & Astronomy, TOEFL / IELTS

Words built from GRAPH

AUTOGRAPH

autograph

A famous person's own signature

Self plus writing: something written in one's own hand.

BIOGRAPHY

biography

The story of someone's life, written by another

Life plus writing. English borrowed it in the 1600s from late Greek biographia.

GEOGRAPHY

geography

The study of Earth's lands and peoples

Greek geographia, literally earth-writing: describing the world on paper.

GRAPHIC

graphic

Vividly clear; or to do with drawing

Greek graphein, to write or draw.

PARAGRAPH

paragraph

A block of text on one idea

Greek paragraphos, a mark written beside the line to show a break.

PHOTOGRAPH

photograph

An image captured with light

Light plus writing. Sir John Herschel helped spread the word in 1839.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

autobiography

The story of your own life, written by you

Self, life, writing. The word appeared in English around 1800.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

bibliography

The list of sources at the end of a book

Book plus writing. Greek biblion, a little book, is also the root of 'Bible'.

CALLIGRAPHY

calligraphy

The art of beautiful handwriting

Greek kallos, beauty.

CARTOGRAPHY

cartography

The making of maps

Greek khartes, a leaf of papyrus. Card, chart and carton are the same paper.

CHOREOGRAPHY

choreography

The design of dance steps

Greek khoreia, a dance.

DYSGRAPHIA

dysgraphia

Difficulty with the physical act of writing

Difficult plus writing.

ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHY

electrocardiography

Recording the heart’s electrical activity

The abbreviation is ECG, or EKG from the German Elektrokardiogramm.

GRAPHITE

graphite

The soft carbon in a pencil

Named in 1789 for what it is for: writing.

LITHOGRAPH

lithograph

A print made from a drawing on stone

Greek lithos, a stone.

ORTHOGRAPHY

orthography

Correct spelling, as a system

Straight writing. English orthography is the standing argument against the name.

PHONOGRAPH

phonograph

An early machine for recording sound

Greek phone, a sound — a sound-writer.

SEISMOGRAPH

seismograph

Records the shaking of an earthquake

Shake plus write: an instrument that writes the earth's tremors as a line.

TELEGRAPHIC

telegraphic

Terse, in the way a telegram had to be

You paid by the word, so the words went.

DEMOGRAPHY

demography

The statistical study of populations

People plus writing. Coined in the 1850s for the new science of counting populations.

EPIGRAPH

epigraph

A short quotation placed at the start of a book

Upon plus writing: an inscription written on something, later the quote on a title page.

HELIOGRAPH

heliograph

A mirror that signals by flashing sunlight

Sun-writing. Armies used them across valleys long after the telegraph arrived.

HOMOGRAPH

homograph

A word spelled like another but with a different meaning

Same plus writing: 'lead' the metal and 'lead' the verb share letters, not sense.

SELENOGRAPHY

selenography

The mapping of the moon’s surface

Greek selene, moon. Mapmakers had named most of the near side before anyone flew there.

Quick check

1. Which word means: A print made from a drawing on stone?

2. Which word means: The list of sources at the end of a book?

3. Which word means: An image captured with light?

Roots that pair with GRAPH

Build autograph and more from GRAPH tiles

WordPith is a daily word puzzle: you get root tiles, you build the word. Free on Android, coming soon.

Coming soon to Google Play