Gracility

Gracility is slenderness, the condition of being gracile, which means slender.

It derives from the Latin adjective gracilis (masculine or feminine), or gracile (neuter)^[1] which in either form means slender, and when transferred for example to discourse, takes the sense of "without ornament", "simple", or various similar connotations.^[2]

In his famous "Glossary of Botanic Terms", B. D. Jackson speaks dismissively^[3] of an entry in earlier dictionary of A. A. Crozier^[4] as follows: Gracilis (Lat.), slender. Crozier has the needless word "gracile". However, his objection would be hard to sustain in current usage; apart from the fact that "gracile" is a natural and convenient term, it is hardly a neologism; the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary^[5] gives the source date for that usage as 1623.

In the same entry for Gracile, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary remarks: Recently misused (through association with grace) for Gracefully slender. This misuse is unfortunate at least, because the terms gracile and grace are completely unrelated: the etymological root of grace is the Latin word gratia from gratus, meaning pleasing^[5] and nothing to do with slenderness or thinness.

In biology

In biology, the term is in common use, whether as English or Latin:

• The term gracile—and its opposite, robust—occur in discussion of the morphology of various hominids for example.
• The gracile fasciculus is a particular bundle of axon fibres in the spinal cord
• The gracile nucleus is a particular structure of neurons in the medulla oblongata
• "GRACILE syndrome", is associated with a BCS1L mutation

In biological taxonomy, gracile is the specific name or specific epithet for various species. Where the gender is appropriate, the form is gracilis. Examples include:

• Campylobacter gracilis, a species of bacterium implicated in foodborne disease
• Ctenochasma gracile, a late Jurassic pterosaur
• Eriophorum gracile, a species of sedge, Cyperaceae
• Euglena gracilis, a unicellular flagellate protist
• Hydrophis gracilis, a species of sea snakes
• Melampodium gracile, a flowering plant species
• Moeritherium gracile, an Eocene mammal species

The same root appears in the names of some genera and higher taxa:

• Gracilaria is a genus of red algae in the order Gracilariales
• Gracillaria is a genus of leaf miner moths in the superfamily Gracillarioidea

See also

• Buckling, for the slenderness ratio in engineering
• Grace (disambiguation)
• Gracilis (disambiguation), a Latin adjective in several species names -as remarked above, the meanings are the same as for gracile, except for their grammatical gender
• Robustness (morphology)

References

1. Gray, Mason D., Jenkins, Thornton; “Latin for Today, Book 2”; Pub: Ginn and Co., Ltd. (1934)
2. Simpson, D. G. (1977). Cassell's Latin dictionary: Latin-English, English-Latin. London: Cassell. ISBN 0-02-522580-4.
3. Jackson, Benjamin Daydon; "A Glossary of Botanic Terms with their Derivation and Accent" 4th Ed. 1928; Pub: Gerald Duckworth & Co. London, W.C.2
4. Crozier, Arthur Alger; “A Dictionary of Botanical Terms”, Pub.: Henry Holt & Co 1893.
5. Little, William; Fowler H.W.; Coulson J.; Onions, C.T. (Ed.): "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principals". Pub.: Oxford at the Clarendon Press (1968).