I have my eye on an antique map-like thing at a dusty little antique store in my hometown. It’s not exacly a map, though, since it’s not a flat representation of the Earth, but rather a slice of a globe. Pondering what to call it, I recalled that it is almost an eighth of a globe (it dosen’t go all the way to the pole, though). Trying to come up with a name for it, I thught to combine a fractional prefix with -sphere (a la ‘hemisphere’). If it were a full quarter of a hemisphere, what would the best name be for it?
Analagous to “hemidemisemiquaver” (that’s a 64th note to Americans, or an 8th of a quaver), what amout “demisemihemisphere”?
Octi?
“Hemidemisemi-” isn’t really a prefix of its own; it’s a compounding of three prefixes that mean ‘half’ from Greek, French and Latin. It probably arose because there was no more efficient way to indicate ‘one eighth’.
An octant is an eighth of a circle; it’s surprising there’s no term for an eighth of a sphere. But maybe you could use ‘octant’ as a base instead of ‘hemisphere’, and coin a term like ‘steroctant’, analogous to ‘radian’ (a unit of angle on a circle) and ‘steradian’ (a unit of angle on a sphere).
According to a Google search, some people seem to use ‘quadrasphere’ to denote one fourth of Earth, which could even be the proper usage, as quadrans means, well, quarter. Following this model, maybe octasphere or octosphere would work. Though I have a feeling that those would read more like ‘eight spheres’.
Or semiquadrasphere, perhaps.
Although there does not appear to be an English term for a one-eighth-sphere, please allow me to suggest reverting to our Latin roots:
1/8 in Latin = Octavus
So the logical latin derivative for 1/8 of a sphere would be Octavusphere.
And it even has a nice ring to it.
See also: Octoroon.
I thought octavus was eighth as in the ordinal number. There’s also Octans for an octant as opposed to a quadrant.
Octava pars is what my dictionary lists for one eighth, fwiw.
An octant isn’t specifically one eighth of a circle; it’s one eighth of anything. I’d have no hesitation referring to “an octant of a globe”, and I doubt there’d be any confusion about what’s meant.
I have not seen it explicitly stated in any actual grammar, but I glean from dictionaries that not unlike the English suffix “-th”, the Latin ordinal numerals also express part-to-whole ratio.
In eighth(?) grade, my friend Dean had a pocket dictionary (actually small enough to fit in a suit coat inner pocket easily - so more of a ‘checkbook’ dictionary). For some reason, he was reading it (Dean was not particularly academically inclined), and, even stranger - it had hemidemisemiquaver in it. I don’t think it was in the classroom dictionary, leading Dean to proclaim his dictionary the superior volume (even with the teeny-tiny type, I’d be surprised if it had 1000 words in it). Sr. Amalia was not amused - I think he actually lost points on an English assignment for shoehorning it into a paper.
Dubloon?
You know, “Pieces of Eight.”