The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations by David Grambs Read Free Book Online

viruses inside a cell, running off row after row of symmetrical polygons as though laying down crystals.
    LEWIS THOMAS, The Lives of a Cell
     
     
In one large painting he had put a bell-shaped mountain in the very foreground and covered it with meticulously painted trees, each of which stood out at right angles to the ground, where it grew exactly as the nap stands out on folded plush. MARILYNNE ROBINSON, Housekeeping
     
     
    Now whether it was physically impossible, with half a dozen hands all thrust into the napkin at a time—but that some one chestnut, of more life and rotundity than the rest, must be put in motion—it so fell out, however, that one was actually sent rolling off the table; and as Phutatorius sat straddling under—it fell perpendicularly into that particular aperture of Phutatorius’s breeches, for which, to the shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste word throughout all Johnson’s dictionary....
    LAURENCE STERNE, Tristram Shandy
     
    S-shaped
sigmoid, annodated
    saddle-shaped
selliform
    sandal-shaped
sandaliform
    saucer-shaped
pateriform, acetabuliform
    sausage-shaped
allantoid, botuliform
    scimitar-shaped
acinaciform
    scissors-shaped
forcifonn
    shallow-depression-shaped
glenoid
    shark-shaped
squaliform, selachian
    shell-shaped
conchiform, conchate
    shield-shaped
scutiform, scutatiform, aspidate, elytrifonn, peltate, clypeate,
clypeiform, peltiform
    shovel- or spade (implement)-shaped
palaceous
    sickle-shaped
meniscal meniscate, meniscoid, menisciform, lunate, falcate,
drepaniform, drepanoid, bicorn
    sieve-like
cribriform, cribrose, cribral, cribrate, coliform
    sling- or loop-shaped
fundiform
    slipper-shaped
calceiform, soleiform
     
     
Quite different from these nests of paper and clay are those of thickly felted vegetable hairs made by large wasps of the genus Apoica. Round or hexagonal in shape, five or six inches in diameter, these nests have the form of an umbrella without a handle or a stalkless mushroom.
    ALEXANDER F. SKUTCH, A Naturalist in Costa Rica
     
     
It was in this place of astonishing miniatures that I came upon the lairs of the lions in the sunny sand—ant lions, that is. Small funnel-shaped pits dimpled the sand—inverted cones an inch or two in diameter across the top, tapering to the bottom perhaps an inch deep in the sand.
    VIRGINIA S. EIFERT, Journeys in Green Places
     
     
Probably the best known of the moths are the sphinx or hawk moths, some of which are so large they resemble hum mingbirds. The bodies of these moths are relatively stout and torpedo-shaped.
    DAVID F. COSTELLO, The Prairie World
     
    snail-shell-shaped
cochleate, cochleiform, soleiform
    snake-shaped
colubriform, anguiform
    spade (implement)- or shovel-shaped
palaceous
    spade (cards)- or inverted-heart-shaped
obcordate, obcordiform
    spatula-shaped
spatulate
    spear-shaped or arrowhead-shaped (with flaring barbs)
hastate
    sphere-shaped
spherical, spheriform
    spike-shaped
spiciform, spicate
    spindle-shaped
fusiform
    spine- or thorn-shaped
aculeiform, spiniform
    spinning-top-shaped
strombuliform
    spoon-shaped
cochleariform, spatulate
    spread-fingers-like
digitate
    stake-shaped
sudiform
    stalk-like
stipiform
    star-shaped
astroid, actinoid, stellate, stellar, stelliform
    star-shaped (small star)
stellular
     
     
So, now, by opening the dam, he was able to fling an imposing girdle of water, a huge quadrilateral with the river as its base, completely around the plantation, like the moat encircling a medieval city.
    CARL STEPHENSON, “Leiningen Versus the Ants”
     
     
    The crust of the Great Basin has broken into blocks. The blocks are not, except for simplicity’s sake, analogous to dominoes. They are irregular in shape. They more truly suggest stretch marks. Which they are.
    JOHN MC PHEE, Basin and Range
     
     
    Salt has a low specific gravity and is very plastic. Pile eight thousand feet of sediment on it and it starts to move. Slowly,