Why this word is great
FORMLINE — [Noun] A swelling, curvilinear line that is the fundamental structural element in the two-dimensional art of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. From the English words form ("shape, structure") + line ("a long, narrow mark"), describing a specific artistic line that creates form. Unlike an "outline," which merely confines a shape, or a "motif," which repeats as decorative subject, the formline is the constitutive, internal skeleton—a swelling and tapering ribbon that defines the primary bodies of creatures, carves negative spaces into secondary forms, and governs the entire visual field with a fluid, muscular logic. It is the black, pulsing vein that becomes the otter's spine, the curve that simultaneously suggests a hawk's wing and a human eye socket, and the continuous flow that binds mythic beings to the surface of a bentwood box. In its elegant, unbroken tension, it asserts that creation and containment are a single, perpetual act.