Infographic

How to spell infographic

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce infographic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does infographic mean?

1. nounA visual presentation of information or data that uses charts, icons, and short text to make complex facts easy to grasp.

Infographic in a sentence

• The marketing team designed a colourful infographic to summarise the annual sales figures.

• She turned the dense report into a single infographic that fit on one page.

Where does infographic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is a modern blend word, formed by joining a clipped form of 'information' with 'graphic'. The 'graphic' element traces back to the Greek graphikos, 'concerning drawing or writing', which itself rests on the verb graphein, literally 'to scratch, draw, or write', recalling the ancient practice of scratching marks onto wax or stone. 'Information' came into English through Old French from the Latin informare, 'to give form to' or 'to shape an idea'. The compound 'infographic' emerged only in the later twentieth century as newspapers and computing made data visualisation common, and it spread rapidly in the digital era of the 2000s. The spelling is straightforward once you see it as 'info' plus 'graphic', with the single 'f' of 'info' being the small trap, since 'information' has only one f.

How the word is built

• info- (clipping of information)
• graph (from Greek graphein, to write or draw)
• -ic (adjective/noun suffix)