Dictionary

cacography en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /kaˈkɒɡɹəfi/ (UK)

Etymology

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

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Bad spelling or punctuation, especially unintuitive spellings considered as a feature of a whole language or dialect.
   • In 1997, two American entrepreneurs, Robert Hoffer and Timothy Kay, formed a company called Typo.net to try to profit from Web surfers' cacography. 1999 February 25, Jack Schofield, The Guardian:
   • A phrase exhibits proofs of cacography, when the accents are misplaced, forgotten, or used erroneously. 1846, Gabriel Surenne, A Practical Grammar of French Rhetoric, IV.4.1:
2. (countable, uncountable) Deliberate comic misspelling; malapropism.
   • The soul of dialect is cacography, the deliberate misspelling of words for comic effect, which is the written equivalent of the malapropism. 2003, Onwuchekwa Jemie, editor, Yo' Mama!, page 10:
3. (countable, uncountable) Poor or illegible handwriting.
   • I don't even recognize the handwriting – kind of a scrawled, almost illegible cacography with the letters slanting haphazardly in all directions. 2010, Martin L. Buxbaum, Negotiations with the Sniper: Book One, page 63:
   • 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. 2002 June 29, Mil Millington, The Guardian:
   • Many illegible letters is the sign of disorder, and the illegibility of Greeley's cacography has furnished numberless anecdotes. 1904, John Rexford, What Handwriting Indicates, pages 90–91:

Forms

Antonyms

calligraphy · orthography

Deriveds

cacographer · cacographical · cacographic

Relateds

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

Translations (15)

pl kakografia (Translations) · fi tuherrus (Translations) · gl cacografía (Translations) · de Falschschreibung (Translations) · de schlechte Handschrift (Translations) · es cacografía (Translations) · ro cacografie (Translations) · de Verballhornung (Translations) · ru какогра́фия (Translations) · fi huono käsiala (Translations) · pt cacografia (Translations) · mk ногопис (Translations) · fr cacographie (Translations) · it cacografia (Translations) · de schlechter Schreibstil (Translations)