Words & WritingGreek → English
Monograph
/ˈmɑnəɡræf/noun
A detailed scholarly work devoted to a single subject.
The Greek roots
μόνος
mónos
single, alone
γράφειν
gráphein
to write
Literally: “written on one thing”
The story of the word
The word started in natural history, where a monograph was a full treatment of one genus or family: every species of barnacle, every British spider. Darwin spent eight years on barnacles producing exactly that kind of book. The sense widened to any single-subject study, and in academic publishing it now mainly means the book a scholar must write to be taken seriously.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
monologuemonopolyautographparagraph
In a sentence
Her monograph on Byzantine seals runs to four hundred pages and sold about ninety copies.