Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Penmanship.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The art of writing; handwriting.
  • noun A particular or individual style of handwriting.
  • noun The art of telling fortunes by examining the hand.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The art of writing or engrossing; handwriting.
  • noun The art of telling fortunes by examining the hand.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun calligraphy or penmanship
  • noun The art of telling fortunes by examining the hand.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun beautiful handwriting

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

chiro- + -graphy

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Examples

  • The chirography was the same as that upon the note of the racing-car episode.

    The Voice on the Wire Eustace Hale Ball

  • The chirography is a beautiful and curious specimen.

    Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians John Hill 1884

  • The chirography was the fashionable "long English;" the diction was good, and the orthography faultless.

    The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) Marion Harland 1876

  • Ong succeeds in creating an accessible outline of the major transitions in human thought from orality to chirography (manuscripts), from chirography to typography (with the widespread use of the printing press), and the resurgence of some aspects of orality in modern electronic communication (both personal and mass-market).

    Orality and Literacy « Books « Literacy News 2009

  • Javert wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct chirography, not omitting a single comma, and making the paper screech under his pen.

    Les Miserables 2008

  • It was written in the most charming of chirography, thought Cosette; in the same hand, but with divers inks, sometimes very black, again whitish, as when ink has been added to the inkstand, and consequently on different days.

    Les Miserables 2008

  • Would ye ken a young stepschuler of psychical chirography, the name of Keven, or (let outers pray) Evan Vaughan, of his Posthorn in the High Street, that was shooing a Guiney gagag, Poulepinter, that found the dogumen number one, I would suggest, an illegible downfumbed by an unelgible? —

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • When first we had seen it we had gazed upon a sea of radiance pierced with lanced forests, swept with gigantic gonfalons of flame; we had seen it emptied of its fiery mists — a vast slate covered with the chirography of a mathematical god; we had seen it filled with the symboling of the Metal Hordes and dominated by the colossal integrate hieroglyph of the living City; we had seen it as

    The Metal Monster 2004

  • She has a beautiful white hand, but her handwriting is infamous; she writes fast and her chirography is of the door-plate order — her letters are immense.

    Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

  • The chirography was labored, heavy and trembling; it betrayed the stiff hand of a man more accustomed to guiding the plough than the pen.

    The Honor of the Name �mile Gaboriau 2003

Comments

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  • Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand!

    - Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 104

    July 31, 2008

  • Give me an albatross to wear around my neck!

    July 31, 2008