Words & WritingGreek → English
Paleography
/ˌpeɪliˈɑɡrəfi/noun
The study of ancient and medieval handwriting, used to read, date and localise manuscripts.
The Greek roots
παλαιός
palaiós
old, ancient
γραφή
graphḗ
writing
Literally: “old writing”
The story of the word
Bernard de Montfaucon, a Benedictine who had worked through more Greek manuscripts than almost anyone alive, published Palaeographia Graeca in 1708 and gave the discipline both its name and its method. Paleography dates a manuscript from the shapes of its letters, its abbreviations and the ruling of its page, often to within a generation and a region. The same prefix runs through Paleolithic and paleontology.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → New Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
Paleolithicpaleontologypaleobotanyorthography
In a sentence
Paleography puts the hand in northern France in the third quarter of the twelfth century.
A term of paleography teaches you to read what looked like a solid grey block.