graphic / graphical: what’s the difference?

Another -ic or -ical adjective question came up recently. This answer is sourced from http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=11622 from the member Focalist:

graphic
1. relating to visual art, especially involving drawing, engraving, or lettering.

2 giving vividly explicit detail.

3 of or in the form of a graph.

graphical
1. of or in the form of a graph.

2 relating to visual art or computer graphics.

(Note that the adverbial form of both is: graphically)

Notice that, despite the overlaps, only the “giving vividly explicit detail” and “relating to computer graphics” are not common to both.

About Robert D. E. Senior

Fully qualified and experienced Professional English teacher / trainer UK native speaker BA (hons, first class) Linguistics and TEFL 15 years experience in UK, Spain and Austria FCE - CAE - CPE - BEC V - BEC H - TOEFL - IELTS Business, Academic and General English
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1 Response to graphic / graphical: what’s the difference?

  1. You could also make a case for photographical by analogy to graphical and indeed their are examples on Google for “photographical data”, but http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ doesn’t list it.

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