pyroballogy — English Dictionary

Noun

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

   Usage

   • Obsolete
   • Rare
   • Uncountable

   Synonyms

   pyrobology

   Examples

   More examples (5)

   [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.