Bowers style acronym

From Polytope Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Bowers style acronyms are a shorthand notation created by Jonathan Bowers, used to identify polytopes without having to write their full (often quite long) names. They have been since expanded on, most notably by Richard Klitzing, either via direct request to the former or by means of expanding general building rules of him, which therefore has resulted in the umbrella term official Bowers style acronym (OBSA) for shorthands in accordance with Bowers's original ones.

Their development and adoption has been largely driven by the project to classify all uniform polytopes in 4 dimensions and higher, although other non-uniform types of polytopes such as CRF polytopes have been christened with OBSAs. They are not universally liked within the polytope enthusiast community.

The general building principle is to start with the full name and reduce every element (numbers, operators, the base object, etc.) into single characters. Then, characters are added euphoniously to make the OBSA readable/pronouncable. For example, "small rhombicuboctahedron" first becomes SRCO, and finally sirco.

Spaces may be added and some letters may be doubled, in order to make the intended pronunciation more obvious or make the name more unique or memorable. Spaces are not necessarily added to separate functionally different parts of the name (such as operators and the ending facet counts). For example, "medial omnicircumfacetopental trishecatonicosachoron" becomes mom fapathi, even though the "medial omnicircum-" part of the name (that contributes mom to the OBSA) is just an arbitrary cut of the full name.

Table of common morphemes[edit | edit source]

Common combinations of morphemes
Combination Meaning
af antifastegium
ap antiprism
appy antiprismatic pyramid
aw antiwedge
co cuboctahedron
cuf cupofastegium
dip duoprism
dp, dip disprismato-
dt, dit ditrigonary, duotegum
fip, fap facetopental
gr great rhombated
gye gyroelongated
hiddix hecatonicosidishexacosichoron
id icosidodecahedron
kv, kav, kev, kiv skewverted
nt penteractitriacontaditeron
ofp, ofap omnifacetopental
omfap omnicircumfacetopental
p(...)ex partially (...-)expanded
puf pucofastegium
pv, piv prismatoverted
rawv retrosphenoverted
quit, quat quasitruncated
rawv retrosphenoverted
sr small rhombated
tip trioprism
wav sphenoverted
xady, ixady hexacosidishecatonicosachoron
xithi, xathi hexacositrishecatonicosachoron
xhi hexacosihecatonicosachoron
xog hexeractihexacontatetrapeton

See also[edit | edit source]