Back in 1596, a guy named Peter Lowe wrote: “The vayne goeth aboue the artier, but not right lyne as other parts doe, but in anfractuosities, like unto a Woodbine.” A woodbine, by the way, is a vine (or “vayne”). What he’s saying, using plenty of words, is that a vine doesn’t grow in a straight line up an arbor, but takes a complicated, convoluted, circuitous path, just like…a vine.
That’s what “anfractuosity” is; complicated convolution. Given that the author has just taken 21 words to say that “vines grow crookedly,” you might not be surprised at the title of the book that contains that bit of wisdom: A Discourse of the whole Art of Chyrurgerie … Whereunto is added the rule of making Remedies … With the Presages of … Hyppocrates. The second edition … enlarged by the Author.
It would probably be a good thing if “anfractuosity” had disappeared from English soon after it was adopted from Latin in the 1500s. But unfortunately, we can find the word still in use in 1919:
“Paint me a cavernous waste shore
Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.”
– T.S. Eliot
And probably worse, the word is still fairly well known as “syntactic anfractuosity,” which is used in relation to legal writing like this: “In witness whereof the parties hereunto have set their hands to these presents as a deed on the day month and year hereinbefore mentioned.” And what does that boil down to? It appears at the bottom of a deed, and all it means is Today’s date.
