I could have said “column”, but that would have seemed dull, so I’ve gone for the diminutive:
Columel.
Actually, “column” isn’t dull at all. The basic “cylinder used as a support” idea has been extended for obvious visual reasons to mean a body of soldiers and a vertical section of a page – written, of course, by a columnist. Who is almost certainly not a Fifth Columnist, or the newspaper wouldn’t continue to use him or her.
A column is also the central part of an orchid, the bit that sticks up in the middle of the flower (I found that here https://answersingenesis.org/biology/plants/orchids-a-bouquet-of-adaptations/; I’m guessing the site name is somewhat tongue-in-cheek!).
Now we reach our columel, which is simply a small column. I’ve never heard the word used, but maybe architects or architectural historians drop it into conversation all the time. Maybe they also talk about columniation, “the use or arrangement of columns”, as in “very fine columniation around the portico”.
A columella is the column between the tip of your nose and your upper lip. That’s not mentioned in Chambers Dictionary, by the way: I discovered it when I Googled “columella” and entries for “columella nose” appeared. It’s also the central axis of a spiral univalve (a mollusc such as a whelk, conch or nautilus, or the humble snail): the pivot around which the whorls of the shell grow.
Clik here to view.
Shells growing around the columella.
Other columels with a biological theme are the central axis of the spore-cases of mosses, and also the central axis of a fruit that remains after the carpels have split away, like the core of an apple.
The columella auris is the auditory ossicle, the little bone that connects the tympanum with the inner ear in lower vertebrates. Which makes me wonder: humans have three separate ossicles (all together now: hammer, anvil and stirrup), so why is our hearing not better than that of lower vertebrates? Maybe it is. How do you actually define a “lower” vertebrate: where’s the dividing line? None of my dictionaries can help. Comments below, please!
You may have thought there were plenty of versions of “column” and “columel”, but the adjectives are no less diverse. Something related to columns or the column shape can be described as columellar, columnal, or columnar, or as having columnarity (sounds a bit pompous, doesn’t it?). If it has columns it can be said to be columnated, columned, columniated.
None of which, of course, are to be confused with calumny, calumniate and calumniated – as I very nearly did just now! To calumniate destroys, to columniate supports. Neat, non?
My brain is reeling – yours too, probably – so we’ll leave it for today. What will tomorrow bring? You’ll have to come back and find out…
