boustro-

(Greek: turning like oxen in plowing; alternate lines in opposite directions; zig-zag procedure)

boustrophedon (s) (noun), boustrophedons (pl)
1. An ancient form of writing with lines alternately written left-to-right and right-to-left: "Boustrophedon is actually a philologists' techspeak and typesetters' jargon."

"Erudite or knowledgeable hackers use boustrophedons for an optimization performed by some computer-typesetting software and moving-head printers."
2. Etymology: from Greek, "turning as an ox in plowing" or "as the ox plows (ploughs)", from bous, "ox" + strephein, "to turn".

boustrophedon text, boustrephedon text (s) (noun); boustrophedon texts, boustrephedon texts (pl)
1. An ancient way of writing manuscripts and other inscriptions in which, rather than going from left to right as in modern English, or right to left as in Arabic, alternate lines must be read in opposite directions: "As a student of ancient writings, Jamie was interested in the boustrophedon texts that he discovered in some classical documents."
2. Etymologically these words come from Greek βους, "ox" and στρεφειν, "to turn", because the hand of the writer went back and forth like an ox drawing a plow across a field and turning at the end of each row to return in the opposite direction.
boustrophedon transform (s) (noun), boustrophedon transforms (pl)
A procedure in which connections of sections are mapped in a zig-zag manner: In mathematics, the boustrophedon transform is computed by filling in a triangle in a process which maps one sequence to another.
boustrophedonic (adjective), more boustrophedonic, most boustrophedonic
1. A reference to the ancient method of writing in which the lines are inscribed alternately from right to left and from left to right.
2. Having a back-and-forth motion with a small step at right angles to the transit at each pass, as in a scanning device.
3. Etymology: turning like oxen in ploughing; a term used only in early Greek writing, which went from left to right and then right to left alternately.
boustrophedonic imaging (s) (noun), boustrophedonic imagings (pl)
Scanning in which the detector that records isotopic emissions moves in alternating opposite directions in a descending series of horizontal lines.
boustrophedonically (adverb), more boustrophedonically, most boustrophedonically
Relating to something that is written alternately from right to left and from left to right, like the course of the plough in successive furrows; as in various ancient inscriptions in Greek and some other languages: "Using boustrophedonically constructed programs is said to be one of the methods preferred by some hackers."