Art & MusicGreek → English
Lithograph
/ˈlɪθəɡræf/noun
A print made by drawing on stone or plate with a greasy crayon, then inking what the grease holds.
The Greek roots
λίθος
líthos
stone
γράφειν
gráphein
to write, draw
Literally: “stone drawing”
The story of the word
Senefelder's discovery is supposed to have started with a laundry list, jotted on a polished limestone slab with a grease pencil because no paper was to hand. Wetting the stone, he found ink clung only where the grease sat, and he spent years turning that into a press. Toulouse-Lautrec took the process to the street in the 1890s, which is why so much of the Belle Époque survives as ink on cheap paper.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
lithographyneolithiclithotripsymonolith
In a sentence
It is a signed lithograph, numbered 12 of 60, not a photographic reproduction.