Boustrophedonically Yours, W. Skeffington Higgins

[beamjockey]

This week, I got to use the word "boustrophedonic" in a sentence.

Then I realized that this was the first time in the current decade I had used it. It just doesn't come up very often.

(We had brought a roll of drawings into a beamline enclosure as a reference. When one leaves, one must check for radioactivity on ones's person or objects one is carrying. My colleague Mike was frisking the roll with a pancake counter, scanning it from end to end, rotating the roll a little, then moving the frisker in the other direction.)

If you, too, want to work "boustrophedonic" into your conversation, it may be best to go someplace where corn-on-the-cob is being served.

Comments

[carbonel]

I am able to use it from time to time, because I have a friend who knits boustrophedonically.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

I remember when daisy wheel printers would print boustre... bostru... bro... back and forth like that.

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

The Northwest Ordinance established the need to layout counties, townships and sections in Michigan and several neighboring states. Usually there are 36 sections(square mile surveyed chunks of land) per township. The sections are numbered in a boustrophedonic manner 1 - 36 to allow a man on horseback to ride through them in numeric order. One of the sections was set aside in each township to provide for schools in the township.

[eub.livejournal.com]

And following afterwards, I don't know exactly how much of the Public Land Survey System uses this township-range numbering layout, but it seems to be pretty general. The PLSS covers most of the U.S. except the old East Coast, and Texas.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the new word. I've already added it to a story I'm writing which involves an archeological study on another world. :-)

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I eat corn on the cob like a typewriter, though without the audible "ding!" at the end of each row.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

See, I'd add the "ding!" until my wife said "Stop clown eating your corn!" In fact, I hope I remember this next corn season.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I remember picking up the noun form from my ex-wife when she was getting her linguistics degree. But never the adjective. Though just today, I was doing a review by asking each of my students about one of Kepler's or Newton's laws in a boustrophedonic manner.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

"Boustrophedonic" is also the way that sections are numbered within townships in lands surveyed according to the Land Ordinance of 1775.

This is per the footnote on page 14 of Simon Winchester's new book THE MEN WHO UNITED THE STATES.

And thus I encounter this word for my first two times within less than a week. I'd known HOW the section numbers were arranged since sometime in the 8th grade, but not known the technical term until now.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

Hm; that will teach me to add comments without reading the previous comments. This should have been a reply to BigBumble's comment.