Graphic means to do with drawing and visual design. Graphic design, a graphic artist, graphics software.
As a noun, a graphic is an image used in a design or a broadcast: an on-screen graphic. The other sense is vividly detailed, usually about something unpleasant: graphic detail, graphic violence, a graphic description — and graphic content is the standard warning label. Note graphics, which takes a singular verb as a field; graphic novel, meaning a book-length comic; and that both senses come from drawing.
1adjectivedrawingTo do with drawing and visual design.
“She has worked in graphic design for about twenty years.”
2adjectivegraphicVividly detailed, usually unpleasantly.
“The film contains graphic violence and is not suitable for children.”
graphic is a quality of drawing or vividness.
Greek graphikos comes from graphein, to write or draw — the same verb behind photograph, biography and every -graph in the language. A graphic description draws the thing rather than merely reporting it.
Proto-Indo-European
*gerbʰ-
Ancient Greek
γραφικός — belonging to painting or drawing, picturesque, of or for writing; of style, lively
Latin
graphicus — belonging to painting or drawing
English, today
graphic
Built from
From Latin graphicus (“belonging to painting or drawing”), from Ancient Greek γραφικός (“belonging to painting or drawing, picturesque, of or for writing; of style, lively”), from γραφή (“drawing, painting, writing, a writing, description, etc.”), from γράφω (“scratch, carve”) (cognate with English carve).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA