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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

Recent Examples on the Web In 1768, Britain’s Royal Society and Royal Navy selected Cook, a naval officer and skilled cartographer, to lead an expedition of more than 90 men to the Pacific Ocean. — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Apr. 2022 That career, along with Nell’s relationship with a fellow cartographer, was shattered in a screaming argument with her father seven years ago over the authenticity of three maps. — Washington Post, 24 Mar. 2022 Truth to tell, Bhattacharya, a physics scholar turned science writer, is less biographer than cartographer. — Samanth Subramanian, The New Republic, 8 Mar. 2022 Long before the sea was named for the 18th century Danish cartographer and Russian naval explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering, the icy water body consisted of two distinct ecosystems — one subarctic, the other resembling the high Arctic. — Susanne Rust, Anchorage Daily News, 26 Dec. 2021 While there’s nothing wrong with turnover in the legislature, in this case a hefty share of incumbents will be tossed out not by a political rival, but rather by a cartographer, Holsworth said. — Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2021 Long before the sea was named for the 18th century Danish cartographer and Russian naval explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering, the icy water body consisted of two distinct ecosystems — one subarctic, the other resembling the high Arctic. — Susanne Rust, Anchorage Daily News, 26 Dec. 2021 Your first instinct might be to grab the cartographer and do a field sobriety test. — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 1 Feb. 2022 The acronym stands for Here Be Dragons, an old cartographer’s shorthand for terra incognita. — Mark Ellwood, Robb Report, 30 Jan. 2022 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'cartographer.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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