A Septagon?

When I was going research on the Julian and Gregorian calendars, I came across some interesting information on the month of September. September used to be the 7th month of the year instead of the 9th month. The prefix sept stands for 7. January and February as we know them did not exist because as an agricultural society, there was no need to denote months when planting, growing and harvesting were not occurring.

Well, I came across a bit of geometry that says a 7 sided polygon is called a heptagon. The definition also refers to it as a septagon but seems to indicate that the preferred name is heptagon.



Now we dredge up some old memory at a previous place of employment. We were discussing geometric figures, trying to name each as they came up. I think it had started with a discussion of the child’s book The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. There is a character that has multiple faces and had a geometrical name so I quizzed my team on geometric figures. We got clear to what a nine sided figure was and had to by-pass it because no one knew what it was.

Well, it just so happens that a nine sided figure is a nonagon. I would have never guessed that. By the same logic, Caesar would have called November Nonaember which not only looks poorly spelled, sounds a like a packaged way to put a fire out.


So, let’s hear it for geometric figures. We have the circle, triangle, rectangle, pentagon, hexagon, septagon (heptagon), octagon, nonagon, and the decagon. It seems we can count to 10 in geometry but not by two’s.

Icool

Cobb