toothed or comb-shaped
pectinate
tooth-like
odontoid, dentiform
top-shaped (inversely conical)
trochiform, turbinate
torpedo-shaped
terete
The stub of a candle, barely two inches long, lit at first attempt. The shadows of the switchboard cupboard bobbed against the wall at my approach. It looked different. The little wooden handle on its door was longer, more ornate, and set at a new angle. I was two feet away when the ornamentation resolved itself into the form of a scorpion, fat and yellow, its pincers curved about the axis of the diagonal and its chunkily segmented tail just obscuring the handle beneath.
IAN MC EWAN,
Black Dogs
... I could imagine how, in our absence, June’s spirit, her many ghosts, might stealthily reassert possession, recapturing not just her furniture and kitchenware and pictures but the curl of a magazine cover, the ancient Australia-shaped stain on the bathroom wall, and the latent body shape of her old gardening jacket, still hanging behind a door because no one could bear to throw it out. IAN MC EWAN ,
Black Dogs
Kayerts stood still. He looked upwards; the fog rolled low over his head. He looked round like a man who has lost his way; and he saw a dark smudge, a cross-shaped stain, upon the shifting purity of the mist.
JOSEPH CONRAD. “An Outpost of Progress”
The room’s one window, too high for a woman not standing on a stool to peer out of, had lozenge panes of leaded glass, thick glass bubbled and warped like bottle bottoms.
JOHN UPDIKE,
The Witches of Eastwick
tower-shaped
turriform, pyrgoidal, turrical, turricular
tree-shaped
arboriform, dendritic, dendriform, dendroid, dendritifonn
triangle-shaped or delta (Δ)-shaped
triangular, sphenic, cuneate, cuneiform
trumpet-shaped
buccinal
tube- or pipe-shaped
tubular, tubiform, fistulous, fistular, fistuliform
turnip-shaped
napiform, rapaceous
turret-shaped
turriculate, turriculated
two- or double-faced
Janiform
U-shaped
hyoid, oxbow-like, hippocrepiform, parabolic
upsilon (Υ)- or Y-shaped
hypsiloid, ypsiliform, hypsiliform
valve-shaped
valviform
violin- or fiddle-shaped
pandurate
vortex-like
vorticiform
wedge-shaped or delta (Δ)-shaped
triangular, sphenic, cuneate, cuneiform, deltoid
wedge-shaped inversely
obcuneate, obdeltoid
wheel-shaped
rotiform, rotate
Sometimes a young man appears, bearing the twin drums, the
tablas,
to help her with the necessary percussion which otherwise she provides herself with sharp little flicks of her supple fingers on the onion-shaped tamboura.
PAUL SCOTT,
The Jewel in the Crown
The rich benignant cigar smoke eddied coolly down his throat; he puffed it out again in rings which breasted the air bravely for a moment; blue, circular—I shall try and get a word alone with Elizabeth to-night, he thought—then began to wobble into hour-glass shapes and taper away; odd shapes they take, he thought.
VIRGINIA WooLF,
Mrs. Dalloway
This miniature world demonstrated how everything was planned, people lived in these modern streamlined curvilinear buildings, each of them accommodating the population of a small town....
E . L . DOCTOROW,
World’s Fair
A high lozenge of light told Medlar’s one cracked and sleep-blurred eye that dawn had come. That dim gray oval was the porthole in the cabin trunk, opposite.
JOHN HEUSEY,
Under the Eye of the Storm
Directly across the way stood a top-heavy dockhouse, a weatherbeaten cube of pure nineteenth century raised up on out-curving supports for the purpose of enabling elderly ladies to sit out on good afternoons to watch the sailboats leaning at their work—a setting rendered completely other-day and unreal by this thick, moist air.
JoHN HERSEY,
Under the Eye of the Stor
m
wing-like
aliform
X-shaped
decussate, chiasmal
Y- or upsilon (Υ)-shaped
hypsiloid, ypsiliform, hypsiliform
Patterns and Edges
I can hardly believe the Angels have a need for such scarves; anyway, the ones made by the Commander’s Wife are too elaborate. She doesn’t bother with the cross-and-star pattern used by many of the other Wives, it’s not a challenge. Fir trees march across the ends of her scarves, or eagles, or stiff humanoid figures, boy and girl, boy and girl. They aren’t scarves for grown men but for children.
MARGARET ATWOOD,
The Handmaid
’s
Tale
Serena Joy, what a stupid name. It’s like something you’d put on your hair, in the other time, the time before, to straighten it.
Serena Joy,
it would say on the bottle, with a woman’s head in cut-paper silhouette on a pink oval background with scalloped gold edges.
MARGARET ATWOOD,
The Handmaid ’s Tale
With such exuberant invention, the identity of the animals represented can become very obscure. Usually there are precise clues. Two prominent teeth and a rectangular cross hatched tail among the maze of symbols indicate a beaver; a wide toothless mouth and no tail, a frog; a dorsal fin and a blow-hole, a killer whale.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH,
The Tribal Eye
having a pattern or design
patterned, designed, figured
having a planned and orderly design
schematic
having a varied pattern
variegated, motley, harlequin
having a consistent or recurrent conceptual element
having a motif
represented in a simplified or symbol-like form
formal
represented in a realistic or somewhat detailed form
naturalistic
having markings or images that don’t mean literally what they represent
(or that mean more than that)
symbolic, ideogramic, ideogrammic, ideogramatic,
ideogrammatic
having markings or images that mean what they represent
pictographic, hieroglyphic, glyphic
lengthwise
longitudinal, axial
widthwise
horizontal, transverse
having many dots
punctuate
Set on a basement of “rusticated” stonework of varying tones, its principal story is built of tan brick banded with strips of gaily-floriated tiles, which parallel the lines of the basement. Then, based on the module of the square flower tile, there rises an intricately corbelled cornice, a series of chimneys and a cylindrical tower, all of which are harmoniously interrelated by patterns such as chevrons and prisms.
GEORCE R. CoLLINS,
Antonio Gaudi
Bichrome wares accompany the prevalent monochrome pottery described above, but with the addition of white-painted motifs. The primarily geometric designs include bands, circles, dots, scrolls, frets, zigzags, triangles, diamonds, chevrons, and sunbursts, either singly or in combination, although some may represent stylized animals. Common shapes are water jars, with designs painted on the vessel shoulders and handles, and tripod-supported bowls with flaring walls, often painted white on both interior and exterior surfaces.
SYLVANUS AND GEORGE BRAINERD,
The Ancient Maya
In a painting from a Kwakiutl housefront ... , which was made for me by an Indian from Fort Rupert, the large head with the incisors will be recognized. The scaly tail appears under the mouth. The broken lines ... around the eyes, indicate the hair of the beaver.
FRANZ BOAS,
Primitive Art
The entrance to this ancient place of devotion was under a very low round arch, ornamented by several courses of that zig-zag moulding, resembling sharks’ teeth, which appears so often in the more ancient Saxon architecture.
SIR WALTER SCOTT,
Ivanhoe
having spots
spotted, speckled, dappled, menald, macular, maculose,
pardine, flecked
having gold dots made with a pointed tool
pointillé
having colored spots or speckles
variegated
having an eye-like spot or spots
ocellate
having soft shadow-like small touches or spots
stippled
having holes
holey, pierced, porous, perforated, spongeous, cribriform
having bowl-like depressions
cratered
having small depressions
pitted, cuppy, cavernulous, foveate
having small fissures or chinks
rimulose
having scoop-like indentations
chiseled, gouged
having a structure of rows and openings
honeycombed, faveolate, faviform, alveolate,
compartmentalized, chambered
having an angular-labyrinth or straight-pathways design
fretted
cavity-divided or compartmentalized
locular, loculate
having a horizontal marking or strip
banded, barred, belted
having a horizontally encircling band or stripe
crossbanded
The North Rim is so deeply excavated by side canyons that in certain sections its pattern resembles a giant-toothed comb. The side canyons of the South Rim merely serrate it in gentle scallops.
ROBERT WALLACE,
The Grand Canyon
The wall decoration contains an arabesque motif in its intersecting semicircular shapes.
LARA VINCA MASINI,
Gaudi
Within the channels are many features, such as teardrop-shaped islands, longitudinal grooves, terraced margins, and inner channel cataracts, that are also found in regions on Earth affected by large floods.
CARY R. SPITZER, ED.,
Viking Orbiter Views of Mars
Men swore. They pushed at the wheels with long oak poles and slashed at the oxen till their backs were crosshatched with bleeding welts and their noses ran pink foam.
JOHN GARDNER,
Grendel
Then I went out to the courtyard. The night was clear. The toothed roof-edge, the watchman with his spear and horn, stood black against the stars.
MARY RENAULT,
The King Must Die
having lines or stripes
lined, striped, lineate, scored
having spaces or interruptions rather than being continuous
broken
having narrow markings or irregular stripes
streaked
having variegated marble-like streaks
marbled
having fine lines
lineolate
having longitudinal (lengthwise) stripes
vittate
in sequence or in rows
serial
having vertical ranks
rectiserial
arranged in two rows or series
biserial
having grooves
grooved, fluted, channeled, cannellated, chamfered, beveled,
rutted
having rectangular grooves
dadoed