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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
Mary Ann Grossmann, Twin Cities, 12 Oct. 2025
Few know more about eclipses at sea than Michael Zeiler, eclipse cartographer at EclipseAtlas.com, who's taken four eclipse cruises since his first in the Caribbean in 1998.
—Susan B. Barnes, Travel + Leisure, 19 Sep. 2025
The California map drawn up by political cartographer Paul Mitchell would see much of the North State and Central Valley redrawn to include more liberal voters from the Sacramento area and coast.
—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
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Cite this Entry
“Cartographer.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cartographer. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025.
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cartographer
noun
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