What is a grapho? Meaning and use in Russian

The vocabulary of any language includes the native and borrowed. Russian is no exception. It consists of words that come from English, German, French, Latin, Greek and many other languages. One of the words of Greek origin, which gave the Russian many words and concepts, is “grapho”.

What is a grapho? How to translate?

The word "grapho" was heard by almost every Russian-speaking person. Even at school, many will learn what “grapho" is in Greek: γράφω - "I write," "write."

Thus, this word appears in a huge number of disciplines and areas of activity that have at least some relation to writing, as well as to drawing or fine art. For example: calligraphy (beautiful handwriting, style), graphomania (excessive penchant for writing), graphite (writing material).

Having found out what “grapho” is from the Greek language, it is necessary to get acquainted with its word formation in Russian.

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Word formation with grapho

Most often, the words of the Russian language, formed with the help of the Greek "grapho", have a complex composition. Simply put, they have two or more roots, one of which is “grapho”. The second component is usually a concretizer, linking the "graph" to a specific branch of knowledge or activity.

The following examples can be cited:

  • photography (light + grapho);
  • geography (land + grapho);
  • printing (numerous + graphic);
  • airbrushing (air + grapho);
  • graphology (grapho + science, teaching).

Mostly, words of Greek origin are also used as the second root. There are occasionally exceptions if the word came into Russian not directly from Greek, but through other languages, as, for example, in the case of airbrushing.

Compounding is not the only way to get new words using the grapho root. Many of them appeared due to the affix method: grapheme, graph, graffiti, graphic, graphite, graph.

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Areas of use of the word

We found out what “grapho” is and how words are formed with its help. In what areas are they most often used?

  1. The medicine. In the field of medical terminology, this word has found frequent use. Examples include fluorography, cardiography, tomography, encephalography, mammography. By the way, the Greek word "gram" (spelling), akin to "grapho", also firmly entrenched in the vocabulary of the Russian, for example, "encephalogram".
  2. Terms related to writing, drawing, sketching: autograph, pictography, graphics, shorthand, spelling, cartography, graphology.
  3. Names of scientific disciplines: geography, ethnography, historiography.
  4. Terms related to human activities: lithography, typography, photography, choreography.

A lot of words came from Greek to Russian, not only related to “grapho”. For example, the galaxy, gymnastics, nostalgia, symbol, energy, hysteria, euthanasia, etc.

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As you can see, the word "grapho" has a wide scope in Russian and other languages, where it came from Greek. Now you know what “grapho” is, how it is translated and in what branches of knowledge it is most often used.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/C34296/


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