Words & WritingGreek → English
Orthography
/ɔːrˈθɒɡrəfi/noun
The conventional spelling system of a language.
The Greek roots
ὀρθός
orthós
straight, correct
γραφή
graphḗ
writing
Literally: “correct writing”
The story of the word
ὀρθός is straight or correct, the same word that straightens teeth in orthodontics and belief in orthodoxy. Greek grammarians already argued about ὀρθογραφία, mostly over accents and doubled consonants. English acquired the word in the fifteenth century, when spelling was still a local matter and one scribe could write the same word three ways on a single page.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
orthodoxorthodonticsorthopaedicgraphite
In a sentence
Finnish orthography is close to a one-to-one map between letter and sound.