Number & MeasureGreek → English
Graph
/ɡræf/noun
A diagram showing how quantities relate, or a set of points joined by edges.
The Greek roots
γράφω
gráphō
to scratch, draw, write
Literally: “a thing drawn”
Follow a root:γράφω10 words
The story of the word
James Joseph Sylvester clipped the word out of graphic formula in an 1878 note in Nature, writing about chemical structures as points joined by links. Mathematics kept both senses that grew from it: the curve you plot on axes, and the network of vertices and edges that became graph theory. The Greek verb first meant to scratch or incise, which is what writing was before ink.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1878
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
graphitephotographgrammarparagraph
In a sentence
The graph flattens after March, which is the part nobody wants to explain.