Cacography

//kaˈkɒɡɹəfi// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Bad spelling or punctuation, especially unintuitive spellings considered as a feature of a whole language or dialect. countable, uncountable

    "A phrase exhibits proofs of cacography, when the accents are misplaced, forgotten, or used erroneously."

  2. 2
    poor handwriting wordnet
  3. 3
    Deliberate comic misspelling; malapropism. countable, uncountable

    "The soul of dialect is cacography, the deliberate misspelling of words for comic effect, which is the written equivalent of the malapropism."

  4. 4
    Poor or illegible handwriting. countable, uncountable

    "Many illegible letters is the sign of disorder, and the illegibility of Greeley's cacography has furnished numberless anecdotes."

Synonyms

All synonyms
phoneticsscratchscrawlscribblescribble

Example

More examples

"A phrase exhibits proofs of cacography, when the accents are misplaced, forgotten, or used erroneously."

Etymology

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

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.