Topography

How to spell topography

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce topography

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does topography mean?

1. nounThe arrangement of the physical features of an area of land, such as its hills, valleys, and elevations.
2. nounThe study or practice of mapping and describing the surface features of a place.

Topography in a sentence

• The rugged topography made building the railway expensive.

• She lectures in topography and teaches students how to read contour lines.

• Surveyors mapped the topography of the valley before any roads were planned.

• A course in topography covers surveying instruments and elevation models.

Where does topography come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek topos, meaning 'place' or 'location', joined with graphia, 'writing' or 'description', from graphein 'to write'. So a topographia was literally a written description of a place, and the term was used by ancient geographers to mean a detailed account of a particular region's features. English adopted it in the 1500s, first for the practice of describing or charting a locality in words, and later for the surveying and mapping of the physical shape of the land itself, its hills, valleys, and elevations. The same topos turns up in 'topic' (originally a set theme or 'place' in an argument) and in 'utopia', literally 'no place'. The -graphy ending links it to a whole family of words such as 'geography' and 'biography', which is a handy reminder that the tricky middle is spelled 'pog', with the unstressed second 'o' easily lost in speech.

How the word is built

• topo- (from Greek topos: place)
• -graphy (from graphia: writing, describing)