Word.ws English Dictionary

geognosy

geognosy noun: the geological study of the Earth's structure and composition.

Noun

geognosy (uncountable)

  1. (historical, obsolete) The geological study of the Earth's structure and composition.
    • Some writers divide Geology into two branches; 1. Geognosy, or Positive Geology, which embraces only the known facts of the science. 2. Geogony, or Speculative Geology, which attempts to point out the causes of those facts, and the inferences that result from them.1847, Edward Hitchcock, Elementary Geology

Origin of geognosy

From German Geognosie; coined by Abraham Gottlob Werner. By surface analysis, geo- + -gnosy.

Words formed from geognosy

Questions about geognosy

What does geognosy mean?
Geognosy means the geological study of the Earth's structure and composition.
What part of speech is geognosy?
Geognosy is a noun.

Words near geognosy in the dictionary

  1. geognost
  2. geognostic
  3. geognostical
  4. geognostically
  5. geognosts
  6. geognosy
  7. geogonic
  8. geogonical
  9. geogonies
  10. geogony
  11. geographer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: geognosy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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