Geographical

How to spell geographical

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce geographical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does geographical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the physical features, regions, or layout of the earth or a particular area.

Geographical in a sentence

• The report breaks sales down by geographical region.

• The river forms a natural geographical boundary between the two counties.

Where does geographical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek geographia, which combined ge meaning 'earth' with graphein meaning 'to write' or 'to describe', so the literal sense was 'a description of the earth'. The Greeks used it for the practice of mapping and writing about the lands and seas of the known world, a discipline the scholar Ptolemy famously systematised. Latin took the term over as geographia, and from there it passed into English through French in the sixteenth century, first as the noun 'geography'. The adjective 'geographical' was formed in English by extending the borrowed stem with the familiar ending -ical, the same pattern seen in 'historical' and 'physical'. The shared geo- element still links the word to relatives such as 'geology' and 'geometry', and remembering that geo means 'earth' helps fix the opening spelling.

How the word is built

• geo- (earth)
• graph (writing/description)
• -ical (adjective suffix)