choreography (English)

Where does "choreography" come from?

The word choreography is a relatively modern invention derived from the French term chorégraphie, which was built from two Ancient Greek roots: khoreía, meaning 'dance,' and graphíā, meaning 'written form.' Originally used to describe the notation used to record dance steps, the term evolved to encompass the entire art of creating and arranging movement sequences for performance.

Full etymology tree

• choreography (English), 'The art of creating, arranging and recording the dance movements of a work, such as a ballet.'
  • borrowed chorégraphie (French), 'choreography'
    • compound χορεία (khoreía) (Ancient Greek), 'dance, especially choral dance with music'
      • derived χορός (khorós) (Ancient Greek), 'dance ring; round dance'
      • suffix -είᾱ (-eíā) (Ancient Greek), 'Superficially appears in abstract nouns derived from σ-stem adjectives, with the true suffix being -ῐᾰ (-ĭă)'
    • compound -graphie (French), '-graphy'

Direct ancestors

• chorégraphie (French)
• choreo- (English)
• -graphy (English)

Updated July 2026

Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris