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Up until the 18th century, maps were often decorated with fanciful beasts and monsters, at the expense of accurate details about places. French mapmakers of the 1700s and 1800s encouraged the use of more scientific methods in the art they called cartographie. The French word cartographie (the science of making maps), from which we get our English word cartography, was created from carte, meaning "map," and -graphie, meaning "representation by." Around the same time we adopted cartography in the mid-19th century, we also created our word for a mapmaker, cartographer.
Examples of cartographer in a Sentence
Aaron Davis, Sacbee.com, 29 June 2025
The grant was meant to go to various freelancers in support of production costs for the book’s layout and design, archival research, a cartographer and editing.
—Jackie Hajdenberg, Sun Sentinel, 8 May 2025
One vessel was renamed the USS Robert Smalls after a former slave who aided the Union in the Civil War, and the other was restyled the USNS Marie Tharp in honor of a ground-breaking oceanographic cartographer, according to the New York Times.
—Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, 4 June 2025
John Brink, a Rand McNally cartographer, came up with a solution: Creating symbols for highways that were printed on the road maps and also put on signs attached to electrical and telephone poles along those roads.
—Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, 1 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for cartographer
Cite this Entry
“Cartographer.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cartographer. Accessed 8 Jul. 2025.
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cartographer
noun
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