Circle, square, triangle — boring! There are so many more shapes than those in nature. Good thing there's a rich vocabulary of fancy scientific words for shapes. Most of them don't get much use, which is a shame. Get to know a few of these, and describe your world with lexical flair.
1. ACICULAR // NEEDLE SHAPED
This word is used by botanists to describe leaves with a long pointy shape and by mineralogists in talking about crystals.
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Not much seen outside of 19th century descriptions of invertebrate fossils, but fun to say.
6. COCHLEATE // SNAIL SHAPED
(Thinkstock)
Plant parts or chemical compounds can be cochleate — rolled into a spiral like a snail shell. Also cochleate, the spiral tube in your inner ear known as the cochlea.
Insects with flabellate antennae look like they have two little fans attached to their head. If you prefer Greek roots over Latin, another word for this is rhipidate.
From the Greek xiphos for sword. If you prefer Latin roots, there's ensiform (from Latinensis). The little piece of pointy cartilage at the bottom of your sternum where the lowest ribs meet is called the xiphoid process.
Arika Okrent is editor-at-large at TheWeek.com and a frequent contributor to Mental Floss. She is the author of In the Land of Invented Languages, a history of the attempt to build a better language. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and a first-level certification in Klingon. Follow her on Twitter.
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