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Definition of "orography" [o•rog•ra•phy]

  • The study of the physical geography of mountains and mountain ranges. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "orography" in a sentence
  • "Examples include the representation of clouds and radiation; dry and moist convective processes; the formation of precipitation and its deposition on the surface as rain or snow; the interactions between the atmosphere and the land-surface orography (including the drag on the atmosphere caused by breaking gravity waves); and atmospheric boundary-layer processes and their interaction with the surface."
  • "It has a very complex orography whose determinants include a mountainous surface full of cliffs, ridges, hillsides and valleys, with a steep and highly dissected topography."
  • "Who could advance objections against conscientious observers, who at less than twenty-four miles distance had marked that curious mountain of Tycho, the strangest system of lunar orography?"