sinistrorse
Oct. 13th, 2022 07:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordsinistrorse (SIN-uh-strawrs, si-NIS-trawrs, sin-uh-STRAWRS) - adj., growing upward in a spiral that turns from right to left.
(Aren't you so glad I provided that Very Helpful guide to which syllable to stress?) So counterclockwise as seen from inside the spiral. Or to put it yet another way, take your right hand with your fingers loosely curled horizontally and thumb pointing up: the thumb points in the direction of growth and the fingers point in the direction of spiraling. This is kinda the opposite hand than you would expect, given that sinistr- part is from the Latin word for left, but anatomy is weird. Can also be used for pure curves that spiral, but outside of analytic geometry it's most commonly used in botany and adding the growing made it easier to explain. The -orse part comes from versus, turning, and the combination was made in Latin, sense of left-turning, and taken into English in the 1850s.
---L.
(Aren't you so glad I provided that Very Helpful guide to which syllable to stress?) So counterclockwise as seen from inside the spiral. Or to put it yet another way, take your right hand with your fingers loosely curled horizontally and thumb pointing up: the thumb points in the direction of growth and the fingers point in the direction of spiraling. This is kinda the opposite hand than you would expect, given that sinistr- part is from the Latin word for left, but anatomy is weird. Can also be used for pure curves that spiral, but outside of analytic geometry it's most commonly used in botany and adding the growing made it easier to explain. The -orse part comes from versus, turning, and the combination was made in Latin, sense of left-turning, and taken into English in the 1850s.
---L.
