brachylogy and brachio-cephalic and brachyodont

One thing you realize right away when you begin to read, study and write about the dictionary is that you can only scratch the surface of a few concepts as you go along. So many things beckon for me to stop and take them in--and I am so tempted to do so, but then the "coverage" pangs return. That is, I need to "cover" so many pages a day or else I will not be "ready" for the thrilla in Cheyenne. But I am the type of person who rebels against almost everything, including systems that I have set up. 'Maybe,' I say to myself, 'I just want to study words and get lost in the "Br's" and never emerge! So what if I do badly in Cheyenne? What? Will I feel shamed in Rev. Bob's presence? Come on, Bill, grow up.' So, I will continue with my pages today, but I first have to stop and note a few words from the preceding pages.

Some Remaining "Bo's" and early "Br's"

I chuckled when I saw that boojum was in the Collegiate. A boojum is an imaginary creature, a particularly dangerous kind of snark, invented by Lewis Carroll in the 1870s in the Hunting of the Snark. Now there is a production of Boojum!, which the advertisements describe as a "full-length work of choral nonsense." Sounds like Lewis Carroll, doesn't it? I paused for a moment, not necessarily to learn about a boojum, but to relive my days memorizing Jabberwocky, imagining what "snicker snack" and "frabjuous" meant, and recalling the most unusual date of my life, where she and I spent two or three hours reciting poetry to each other (and I recited Jabberwocky as one of my favorites).

Back to 21st century "reality." Well, 21st century reality often means to me that we retreat to ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the Bible. So, I must pause at boustrophedon. Derived from Greek words meaning "as the ox turns" (wasn't there a TV show named that in the 1960s?), boustrophedon means a kind of poetry or prose where the meaning of the lines alternates from right to left and left to right. This meaning is attested as early as the second century A.D. or even before, and thus is not a made-up rhetorical term from the 17th century (like battology or something like that). Thus, this literary style is like an ox plowing the field, back and forth. I love that picture and think that someday, when I am old, I will not wear purple, but I will use boustrophedon.

Brachi and Brachy

Last, but not least, from the "earlier" pages are words associated with brachi and brachy. You might say, 'give me a brake,' or a 'break,' but these two roots point to two completely different realities that need to be mentioned. The former is derived from the Latin word for "arm"--brachium, while the latter comes from the Greek word brachus, meaning "short." Let's see if we can get lost in these words for a moment. Something that is brachial, therefore, belongs to the arms; so an organism that is brachiate has arms. But brachiate can also be used to mean "the act of brachiating," as in the sentence, "They lacked the brachiating specializations of modern apes." Though brachiferous or brachigerous means "arm-bearing," it doesn't mean "arm-bearing" in the same way that an armiger bears arms. Wow, we are getting confusing, here, aren't we? Though the words coming from brachi all seemingly have their origin and use in scientific/medical discussion, I long for the day that we can break out those words from their medical prison and free them for humanistic use by normal people.

We run into our transition from brachi to brachy when we look at the words brachio-cephalic and brachycephalic. These can make you scratch your head. You wonder, 'is the first the Irish form of the second?' Not to worry. The former means "pertaining to both arm and head" and it applies "chiefly to the blood-vessels common to the arms and head." The latter, on the other hand, means "lit. short-headed" and can be used in the sentence, "There goes another brachycephalic Scot" [Recall, I am also a Presbyterian minister, and I love all things Scottish]. But the words built off brachy really are quite stunning, if you ask me. Even the Collegiate lists several (ok, it lists three). But the terms are significant. I love brachygraphy, which is defined as the practice of writing with abbreviations or with abbreviated characters, such as in shthd or stnogrphy. A sentence. "She thought I was taking calligraphy, but, in fact, I was taking a short course in brachygraphy." We then return to a number of scientific terms, just to keep us from having too much fun in life, such as brachyodont (short teeth, I guess) and brachyurous or brachyourous, which means "short-tailed" (oura is, you guessed it, Greek for tail) and refers to one of three tribes of "Decapod Crustacea," which, not unexpectedly, have short or no tails.

Conclusion

I have to keep this short so I will conclude with my favorite brachy term: brachylogy, which is a rhetorical/grammatical device defined as "conciseness of speech" or "laconism." "His speeches were full of effective uses of brachylogy." I haven't fully digested the difference between brachylogy and asyndeton, but I think the latter focuses primarily on the absence of connecting words (conjunctions), while the former emphasizes terseness of style in general. Let's break off from this now, and keep going.

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