pyroballogy

Definitions

The study of artillery; the practice of using artillery as a weapon.

obsolete, rare, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“[H]e was enabled, by the help⟳ of ſome marginal documents at the feet of the elephant, together with Gobeſius’s military architecture and pyroballogy, tranſlated from the Flemiſh, to form⟳ his diſcourse with paſſable perſpicuity.”

“[H]e threw a faithless cipher of moon into the sky, put⟳ beneath it a fatherless girl craving affection, and then helpless before the doom of his own⟳ contrivances watched in his mind⟳, possibly on that very prom night or in a car parked on an overlook up in the Blue Ridge mountains, the hideous pyroballogy of some vile teenager with a hanging lip, his suspenders disengaged, prying off her gown with his grice-fingered hands and then bucking away like⟳ a country stink-cat, whereupon she— […]”

“Pyroballogy, Lieutenant Drinkwater, is the art of throwing fire. 'Tis both scientific and alchemical, and that is why officers in my profession cannot purchase⟳ their commissions like⟳ the rest⟳ of the army, so it is. […] 'Tis an ancient art, this pyroballogy. Archimedes himself founded it at the siege of Syracuse and the Greeks had their own⟳ ballistic fireballs.”

“And how, by what law of mechanics, can such decisions contribute⟳ to the maintenance of its gyration? It is that they are taken suddenly and violently: explosions of disgust. It is what's called repulsion, one of the forces most commonly employed in pyroballogy.”

“Instead of clarifying the geometry of fortification, however, the treatises only bring⟳ confusion, such that Toby's attempts to follow⟳ the rules of pyroballogy result⟳ in his mistaking a parabola for a hyperbola, and so on.”

CEFR level