uncial means of or relating to an ounce, or an inch, especially to letters printed an inch high. It carries an Arena rating of 1437, earned across 8 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, uncial ranks #2,552 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #2,869 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #4,307 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #5,426 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
uncial is pronounced /ˈʌn.si.əl/.
Why “uncial” is a great word
A majuscule script of large, rounded, unjoined letters used in European manuscripts from roughly the fourth to the ninth centuries. Its name derives from the Latin uncia ('a twelfth part, ounce, inch') coupled with the adjectival suffix -al, first attested in English in 1650. Unlike minuscule (which denotes the smaller, cursive scripts that superseded it) or cursive (which implies hastened, connected strokes), uncial is a script of deliberate, stately isolation. It is the confident curve of an epsilon catching candlelight on vellum, the heavy shoulder of a rho standing alone in a column of text, and the patient, inky breath between each character—a visual cadence for sacred words, where every letter is an island of contemplation in a silent sea.
Etymology
Attested 1650, from Latin uncia (“a twelfth part, ounce, inch”) + -al.
adj
- Of or relating to an ounce, or an inch, especially to letters printed an inch high.
- Of or relating to a majuscule style of writing with unjoined, rounded letters, originally used in the 4th–9th centuries.
noun
- A style of writing using uncial letters.
- A letter in this style.
- A manuscript in this style.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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