acephalic
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Adjective
[edit]acephalic (not comparable)
- Without a head.
- Synonyms: acephalous, headless
- an acephalic statue
- 1990, Mark Leyner, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist[2], New York: Harmony Books, page 5:
- […] two acephalic sardines in mustard sauce are asleep in the rank darkness of their tin container.
- (medicine, of a headache, dated) Characterized by a migraine aura without pain.[1]
- Without a leader.
- Synonyms: acephalous, leaderless
- an acephalic society
- 1688, uncredited translator, A Dissertation Concerning Patriarchal and Metropolitical Authority by Emmanuel Schelstrate, London: Matthew Turner, [Introduction], p. xx,[3]
- […] he endeavours not only to shew that the English Church was Acephalic, that is, without a Head; but also Autocephalic, that is under its own proper Jurisdiction only […]
- 1980, William S. Laughlin, Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge[4], New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, page 144:
- [the] acephalic democracy [of Aleut village communities]
- (prosody) Deficient in the beginning, as a line of poetry that is missing its expected opening syllable.
- Synonym: acephalous
- 1988, John Hollander, chapter 7, in Melodious Guile: Fictive Pattern in Poetic Language[5], Yale University Press, page 146:
- The acephalic pentameters yield to tetrameters with a starting dactyl or anapest […]
- Lacking the first portion of the text. (of a manuscript)
- Synonym: acephalous
- Coordinate terms: acaudal, atelous
- 2014, Mark C. Amodio, “The Poems of the Vercelli Book”, in The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook, Chichester: Blackwell, page 176:
- All the texts, with the exception of the acephalic Homiletic Fragment I, begin with a large, plain capital letter […]
Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]without a head — see headless
prosody — see acephalous