Let it be agreed that the synonyms “columnar” and “columniform” rank among the finest adjectives in all of Anglophonics. Their quality owes especially to their suffixes, of course, but while other words may boast of similar ends (planar, cuneiform, &c.), I can think of none so fun to utter:
kuh-luhm-ner
kuh-lumn-uh-fawrm
Perhaps you wonder, as I have often wondered, why there are no corresponding adjectives for rows. I have my columnar data, and my row data—or is it my row-based data? my row-form data? Anywhere you take it, boredom sets in immediately. Why must this asymmetry be?
Well, I gave it some thought so you wouldn’t have to, and the reason’s reasonable enough: a “row” is always a concept, never a physical object (a spatial association of physical objects, perhaps, but not itself an object). A column, by contrast, can be a discrete physical object (Corinthian, Ionic, Doric) as well as an abstraction. While “columnar” and “columniform” are sometimes used in the abstract case, this usage is imprecise, as only physical objects may be truly “(shaped) like a column.” It conveys no information to say that something is shaped like a row, since no one has any idea what a row is shaped like.
Don’t miss next week’s declamation on the distinction between “overtone” and “undertone.”
This musing brought to you by gravity!