boustrophedonally

English

Etymology

From boustrophedon +‎ -ally.

Adverb

boustrophedonally (comparative more boustrophedonally, superlative most boustrophedonally)

1. In a boustrophedon manner.
   • 1877, William Smith, Henry Wace, editors, A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines: Being a Continuation of ‘The Dictionary of the Bible’, volume I, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, and Company, page 361:

     The words of those verses which are regarded as containing a peculiar recondite meaning are ranged in squares in such a manner as to be read either vertically or boustrophedonally, beginning at the right or left hand.

   • 1879, complied and collected by Philip Abraham, הנסתרת והנגלתר: Curiosities of Judaism. Facts, Opinions, Anecdotes, and Remarks Relative to the Hebrew Nation, London: […] the Author, page 266:

     This method causes the words to be arranged in a sort of diagram something like a cryptographical scale, in which the words are to read from right to left, from left to right, horizontally, perpendicularly, angularly, boustrophedonally, circumlocutorally, till some hidden and estoric sense is squeezed out to form the essence of the Kabbalah.

   • 1910 October 29, The Knoxville Sentinel‎^[1], volume XXIV, number 257, Knoxvile, Tenn.:

     The Chinese read from top to bottom, and early Greek inscriptions were read boustrophedonally—that is, alternately from left to right and right to left, as furrows are made in plowing a field.

   • 1911, C. H. Emerson, Psychocraft: Being the Art of Following the Lead of Instinct Which Uses Human Organic Mechanisms with Giant Strength or Ariel Touch to Avert Disaster, Create Genius, Prophetic Insight, or Verify Faith with Superorganic Intuitions; Incidentally Introducing a New Idea of the Principle of Onwardness […]; The Oracle of Aaron’s Breastplate Carefully Worked Out and Practically Applied as Herein Presented in the Elegant and Infallible Oracle of Ellu, page 177:

     […] read boustrophedonally as follows: […]

   • 1955, Pietro Romanelli, The Roman Forum, page 29:

     The Latin text of the inscription in characters still closely resembling the Greek ones and arranged boustrophedonally (from top to buttom^[sic] and back from bottom to top) should not be dated later than the middle of the V century B. C. (though according to some it could be dated as far back as the VI century B. C.) concerns a law, possibly relating to ceremonies held in this spot by the rex sacrificulus, or to the sacred character particular to the spot itself.

   • 2005, Karl Anton Nowotny, translated by George A. Everett and Edward B. Sisson, Tlacuilolli: Style and Contents of the Mexican Pictorial Manuscripts with a Catalog of the Borgia Group, Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, →ISBN, page 221:

     The arrangement indicates that the series of six pictures is to be read boustrophedonally, beginning at the lower right: […]

Synonyms

• boustrophedonically