Dolichocephaly

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A condition where the head is unusually long and narrow from front to back rather than wide
2. A cranial shape characterized by an elongated length relative to its width, giving a stretched appearance of the skull
3. An anatomical variation or disorder marked by a disproportionately extended head length, resulting in a narrow skull form

Etymology: Dolichocephaly is a technical coinage, built in the modern scientific style from two Greek roots. The first part, "dolicho-", comes from Greek "dolikhos", meaning "long", and the second, "-cephaly", comes from Greek "kephalē", meaning "head". Put together, the term describes a skull whose length is markedly greater than its breadth, the opposite of the rounder shape called brachycephaly. The word belongs to the vocabulary of 19th-century anthropology and craniometry, when researchers measured skulls and sorted people into categories by their proportions. Its pairing with brachycephaly shows how these terms were built as matched opposites, so that a single measurement could be named at both extremes. The Greeks themselves had no such word, since the combining form is a later scientific construction drawn from their language.

Synonyms: long-headedness, elongated skull

Antonyms: brachycephaly, short-headedness