acephalic

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

English a-

English cephalic

English acephalic

From a- + cephalic.

Adjective

acephalic (not comparable)

1. 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.

2. (medicine, of a headache, dated) Characterized by a migraine aura without pain.
3. 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]

4. (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 […]

5. 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

• acephalia
• acephalous
• acephaly
• anencephalic
• cephalic

Translations

without a head — see headless

prosody — see acephalous