What is a lineament?

Some words have the power to arrest you in life’s rush towards the next to-do. They stop you enough for you to say, “O yes … yes … there is that … I need to get a handle on that.”

“Lineament” for me is such a word.

What is a lineament? Well, dictionary.com puts it this way: “a characteristic property that defines the apparent individual nature of something.”

A lineament, then, is something that is inherent in a thing (in other words, an internal essence) that makes that thing what it is in appearance and carriage (in other words, in external quality).

Dictionary.com then quotes this from Norman Mailer as an example:"the gross and subtle folds of corruption on the average senatorial face are hardly the lineaments of virtue." Now the last thing I want is to divert attention to politics -- or to Norman Mailer for that matter. But I love this sentence.

The lineaments of virtue. Virtue itself is not a “thing” that is seen in the sense that it can be measured for dimensions and weight like, say, this computer I’m writing on. But it is something the “appearance and carriage” of which can be seen.

Embedded in lineament is the word line. This is line not in the sense of an abstract geometrical line, but in the sense of a living genealogical line. It is line in the sense of lines that make up a web, a netting, a system, a framework, a matrix, in short, lines that precede -- because they enable -- the “appearances and carriages” of visible life.

Think of the lines of DNA that make up who we are. (But DNA itself is also simply an example).

Lines of life. Lineaments.

Logos2Go

Psalm 16.6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

Lineament, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/carriage, accessed May 6, 2009.