pyroballogy

noun

Etymology: A variant of pyrobology, from pyro- (prefix meaning ‘fire, heat’) (from Ancient Greek πῦρ (pûr, “fire; lightning”)) + Ancient Greek βάλλειν (bállein, “to throw”) + -logy (suffix indicating a branch of learning or study of a particular subject) (from Ancient Greek -λογῐ́ᾱ (-logĭ́ā), from λόγος (lógos, “word, speech; reason, reckoning; account, explanation”)). βάλλειν is derived from βᾰ́λλω (bắllō, “to hurl, throw; to strike, touch”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH- (“to pierce; to throw, to hit by throwing”).

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

   “[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— […]”