different between calligraphy vs cacography

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French calligraphie, from Ancient Greek ??????????? (kalligraphía, literally “pretty writing”), from ?????? (kállos, “beauty”) + ????? (gráph?, “to draw”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: k?-l?g'r?-fi, IPA^(key): /k??l????fi/

Noun

calligraphy (countable and uncountable, plural calligraphies)

1. (uncountable) The art or practice of writing letters and words in a decorative style; the letters and words so written.
   • 1981, Wayne E. Begley, 2: The Symbolic Role of Calligraphy on Three Imperial Mosques of Sh?h Jah?n, Joanna Gottfried Williams (editor), Kal?dar?ana: American Studies in the Art of India, page 7,

     This paper will explore the role of calligraphy on three royal mosques built during the reign of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1628-1658): […] .
2. (countable) Any such style of decorative writing.
3. (countable) A document written in decorative style.
   • 2004, Diana J, Mukpo, Carolyn Rose Gimian (editors), Chogyam Trungpa, The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa, Volume 7, page 169,

     Only a small number of Trungpa Rinpoche's calligraphies have been reproduced heretofore, some in very limited editions.

Synonyms

• (art or practice of decorative writing): chirography, penmanship

Related terms

• calligrapher
• calligraphic

Translations

Further reading

• calligraphy on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• graphically

English

Alternative forms

• kakography

Etymology

From caco- +? -graphy, perhaps after Middle French cacographie.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ka?k????fi/
• Rhymes: -????fi

Noun

cacography (countable and uncountable, plural cacographies)

1. Bad spelling or punctuation, especially unintuitive spellings considered as a feature of a whole language or dialect. [from 16th c.]
   • 1846, Gabriel Surenne, A Practical Grammar of French Rhetoric, IV.4.1:

     A phrase exhibits proofs of cacography, when the accents are misplaced, forgotten, or used erroneously.

   • 1999, Jack Schofield, The Guardian, 25 Feb 1999:

     In 1997, two American entrepreneurs, Robert Hoffer and Timothy Kay, formed a company called Typo.net to try to profit from Web surfers' cacography.
2. Poor or illegible handwriting. [from 17th c.]
   • 1904, John Rexford, What Handwriting Indicates, pp. 90-91:

     Many illegible letters is the sign of disorder, and the illegibility of Greeley's cacography has furnished numberless anecdotes.

   • 2002, Mil Millington, The Guardian, 29 Jun 2002:

     Germans write a "1" so it's easy to confuse it with a "7": mathematics and cacography can leave Margret and I not speaking to each other for a week.

Antonyms

• (poor spelling system): orthography
• (poor handwriting): calligraphy

Derived terms

• cacographer
• cacographic
• cacographical

Translations

See also

• illegible
• indecipherable
• indistinct
• obscure
• scrawled
• unclear
• undecipherable
• unreadable