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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
Lia Russell, Sacbee.com, 27 Aug. 2025
The Mercator map was created in the 16th century by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator.
—Jason Ma, Fortune, 23 Aug. 2025
Created by cartographer Gerardus Mercator for navigation, the projection distorts continent sizes, enlarging areas near the poles like North America and Greenland while shrinking Africa and South America.
—Reuters 4 Hr Ago, CNN Money, 15 Aug. 2025
As a professional cartographer, his reputation and ability to make a living is on the line if his map was found to be less than useful.
—The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 15 July 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Cartographer.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cartographer. Accessed 4 Sep. 2025.
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cartographer
noun
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