Chart

How to spell chart

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chart

What does chart mean?

1. nounA sheet, table, or diagram that displays information, figures, or geography in an organised visual form.
2. verbTo plan, map out, or record the progress of something carefully.

Chart in a sentence

• noun

  The nurse recorded the patient's temperature on a chart at the foot of the bed.

• verb

  The team met every week to chart the next phase of the project.

• noun

  The sales figures were easier to follow once the manager turned them into a chart.

• verb

  Researchers used the survey to chart the spread of the illness across the region.

Where does chart come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin charta, meaning a leaf of papyrus or a sheet of paper, which itself was borrowed from the Greek khartes with the same sense. Latin charta passed into Old French as charte and later carte, and English took it up in the 1500s to mean a map, especially a navigator's sea map showing coasts and depths. From that nautical sense it broadened to mean any sheet displaying organised information, such as a table or a diagram of figures. The same Latin root sits behind the everyday words 'card', 'carton', and 'charter', all of which trace back to that single sheet of paper. Because the original sense was a sailor's map, the spelling kept its plain four-letter shape and rarely causes trouble beyond the soft 'ch' opening.

How the word is built

• chart (from Latin charta: a sheet of paper or papyrus)