Epigraphy and palaeography

The first entry is a inscrição lapidar, and the adjective English puts beside it has travelled much further than the noun. « Lapidary » starts where this list starts, on stone: the Latin lapis is the stone, lapidarius the man who works it, and « a lapidary » is still the craftsman who cuts and polishes gems. Out of that trade grew a second sense, now the commoner one. Because anything meant for stone had to be short, weighed and final, « lapidary » came to describe a manner of writing: « a lapidary phrase », « lapidary prose », « the lapidary brevity of the last line ». Nothing in that use touches rock, and a reader who meets it in a review is not being sent to a quarry. A third member of the family hides the stone completely. « Dilapidated » is built on lapis too, and described a building whose stones had been scattered; it is now said of a shed, a car or a coat, and nobody hears the masonry in it. Portuguese keeps lapidar beside the inscription, and uses the same form for the verb: lapidar um diamante is to cut a gem.