Geographic

How to spell geographic

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce geographic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does geographic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the physical features, regions, and layout of the earth's surface.

Geographic in a sentence

• The report broke sales down by geographic region.

• Mountain ranges form a natural geographic barrier between the two countries.

Where does geographic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word reaches back to the Greek geographia, which literally meant 'earth writing' or 'description of the earth', combining ge 'earth' with graphein 'to write or draw'. The ancient Greeks used it for the systematic mapping and description of the known world, and the scholar Ptolemy famously titled his great atlas of the second century the Geographia. Latin took the noun over as geographia, and the adjective form passed through French (geographique) into English around the early 1600s. The spelling preserves both Greek building blocks intact, which is why the silent-feeling 'eo' run and the 'graph' core hold steady. The same ge- root still anchors familiar relatives such as geology and geometry, while the graph- element turns up in photograph and autograph.

How the word is built

• geo- (earth)
• graph (to write/describe)
• -ic (adjective suffix)