Definition of ORTHOGRAPHY

Did You Know?

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word! That quote, ascribed to Andrew Jackson, might have been the motto of early English spelling. The concept of orthography (a term that derives from the Greek words orthos, meaning "right or true," and graphein, meaning "to write") was not something that really concerned people until the introduction of the printing press in England in the second half of the 15th century. From then on, English spelling became progressively more uniform and has remained fairly stable since the 1755 publication of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (with the notable exception of certain spelling reforms, such as changing "musick" to "music," that were championed by Noah Webster).

Examples of orthography in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web But English is, of course, a very peculiar language, as Bernard Shaw complains, the orthography and the pronunciation have nothing in common. — Gabe Friedman, sun-sentinel.com, "Harold Bloom dreamed in Yiddish until his death," 17 Oct. 2019 The governments of Nunavut and of Canada, the newspaper’s biggest advertisers, still want adverts set in syllabics and in the roman orthography now used for Inuinnaqtun, an official language in the territory. — The Economist, "The Inuit agree on a common writing system," 3 Oct. 2019 Egyptian Arabic still lacks a standardized orthography, but its use has become more common during the past fifteen years, in part because of the Internet and texting. — Peter Hessler, The New Yorker, "Learning Arabic from Egypt’s Revolution," 7 Apr. 2017 Typically, Tolkien and his language-nerd adherents have developed the tongue’s grammar and orthography to almost headache-inducing levels. — John Baichtal, WIRED, "Top 10 Geekiest Constructed Languages," 26 Aug. 2009

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