Apedia

Chirography Kye Rah Gruh Fee Noun Handwriting Penmanship Calligraphy Greeks Combining

Front chirography \kye-RAH-gruh-fee\
Back noun
1. Handwriting, penmanship.
2. Calligraphy.

[We can thank the Greeks again for the combining forms chiro- (hand) and -graphy (writing). The word has many cousins:

chiromancy: reading palms to divine the future: palmistry
chiropractic: adjusting the spine (using hands, presumably)
chiropody: an odd name for podiatry (treating foot problems)
chiropter: another name for bats (who got their hands retrofitted as wings at Intelligent Design, Inc.)]

"This envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present." - Nathaniel Hawthorne; The Scarlet Letter; 1850.

Learn with these flashcards. Click next, previous, or up to navigate to more flashcards for this subject.

Next card: Inveterate friends in-vet-uh-rut adjective firmly established habitual middle

Previous card: Gadzookery gad-zoo-kuh-ree noun british archaisms historical

Up to card list: Hard English Vocabulary