English

Alternative forms

• oreography

Noun

orography ‎(usually uncountable, plural orographies)

1. (geomorphology) the scientific study, or a physical description of mountains
   • 1846, Joseph Emerson Worcester, A universal and critical dictionary of the English language: to which are added Walker's Key to the pronunciation of classical and Scripture proper names, much enlarged and improved, and a pronouncing vocabulary of modern geographical names, Boston: Wilkins, Carter, and Company, published 1849, page 501:

     Orography: A description of mountains.

   • 1853, Edward Hitchcock, “The Geology of the Globe”, in Outline of the Geology of the Globe and of the United States in Particular with Sketches of Characteristic American Fossils., Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Company, page 10:

     A knowledge of the Hydrography of a country aids as much in determining its geology as does its Orography, — that is, a description of its mountains.

2. the orographic features of a region
   • 1911, Africa, article in Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition,

     Morocco was in 1883-1884 the scene of important explorations by de Foucauld, a Frenchman who, disguised as a Jew, crossed and re-crossed the Atlas and supplied the first trustworthy information as to the orography of many parts of the chain.

   • 1995, B. W. Atkinson, Introduction to the fluid mechanics of meso-scale flow fields, in A. Gyr, Franz-S. Rys (editors), Diffusion and Transport of Pollutants in Atmospheric Mesoscale Flow Fields, page 20,

     Most flows actually occur, of course, over non-uniform orography and consequently in numerical models of such flows it is necessary to transform the coordinates so that the equations accurately represent flows in such terrain (Gal-Chen and Somerville 1975).

   • 2006, Austin Woods, Medium-Range Weather Prediction: The European Approach, page 105,

     The independent scientists of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) expressed concerns about how the spectral model would deal with steep mountains. […] It was this work that lead to development of the envelope orography outlined below.

Translations

References

• OED 2004 (online)