Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:
FASCICLE
When books are produced by sewing individual sections into the binding, each section is called a
fascicle
(pronounced FAS-i-kel). It is most particularly used to indicate an installment of a book published separately. The word comes from the Latin
fasciculus
, a diminutive of
fascis
, "bundle." The same root yields the word
fasces
, the bound bundle of rods with a projecting ax head that the Romans used as a symbol of civil authority (and also, regrettably,
Fascist
).
Example:
The first fascicle of the great
Oxford English Dictionary
, including the entries "A-ant," was published on Feb. 1, 1884.