"of, pertaining to, using, or produced by photography," 1839, from photograph + -ic. Meaning "minutely accurate" is by 1864; photographic memory is from 1865. Related: Photographical; photographically.
Entries linking to photographic
photograph n.
"a picture obtained by any process of photography," 1839, coined by English polymath and photography pioneer Sir John Herschel (son of the astronomer) from photo- "light" + -graph "something written."
It won out over other suggestions, such as photogene and heliograph. Photogram (1859), based on telegram, did not catch on. Neo-Anglo-Saxonists prefer sunprint; and sun-picture (1846) was an early Englishing of the word. The verb is first found (along with photography and photographic) in a paper Herschel read before the Royal Society on March 14, 1839. Related: Photographed; photographing.
-ic
Middle English -ik, -ick, word-forming element making adjectives, "having to do with, having the nature of, being, made of, caused by, similar to," from French -ique and directly from Latin -icus or from cognate Greek -ikos "in the manner of; pertaining to." From PIE adjective suffix *-(i)ko, which also yielded Slavic -isku, adjectival suffix indicating origin, the source of the -sky (Russian -skii) in many surnames. In chemistry, indicating a higher valence than names in -ous (first in benzoic, 1791).
In Middle English and after often spelled -ick, -ike, -ique. Variant forms in -ick (critick, ethick) were common in early Modern English and survived in English dictionaries into early 19c. This spelling was supported by Johnson but opposed by Webster, who prevailed.
telephoto adj.
also tele-photo, 1898, shortened form of telephotographic (1892), in reference to lenses introduced at that time to increase the magnification of photographs taken by a camera, from tele- + photographic.