tectiform

English

WOTD – 7 July 2009

A turtle with a tectiform carapace

Tectiforms (cave paintings) from the cavern of Font-de-Gaume, Dordogne

Etymology

From New Latin tēctiformis (“roof-shaped”), from tēctum (“roof”) + -ifōrmis.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtɛk.tɪ.fɔːm/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɛk.tə.fɔɹm/

Adjective

tectiform (comparative more tectiform, superlative most tectiform)

1. (biology, anthropology) Roof-shaped; sloping downwards on two sides from a raised central ridge.

Translations

roof-shaped

• Crimean Tatar: eki yaqı enişli
• Finnish: harjamainen
• French: tectiforme (fr)

Noun

tectiform (plural tectiforms)

1. (anthropology) A type of cave painting or engraving, having in its simplest form the shape of an upward-pointing wedge or arrow, thought to represent the roof of a tent or rudimentary building.
   • 1924, American Anthropologist, Volume 26, New Series, page 48,

     The tectiforms reproduce in a remarkable manner the simple shelters, tents, and huts in use today among primitive and nomadic races in various parts of the world.

   • 2014, David Maclagan, Line Let Loose: Scribbling, Doodling and Automatic Drawing‎^[1], page 8:

     Because of their composition and the coexistence in them of meanders and tectiforms they differ from chimpanzee drawings, which are in many other ways a comparable phenomenon.

   • 2015, Molly Fuller, Robert Miltner, “Chapter 9: Land as Ekphrastic Prompt for Memoirist Prose Poems in N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain”, in Sandra Lee Kleppe, editor, Ekphrasis in American Poetry: The Colonial Period to the 21st Century, page 162:

     Inclusion of both ideomorphs and tectiforms as proto-art, and adaptation of the images to the natural textures of the rock surfaces as proto-cinema, suggests that the need to animate and annotate go beyond mere literal representation.