pachycephalic

From pachy- +‎ -cephalic.

pachycephalic (comparative more pachycephalic, superlative most pachycephalic)

1. (medicine) Characteristic of or characterized by pachycephaly.
   • 1862, A Year-book of Medicine, Surgery, and Their Allied Sciences:

     Thus, synostosis of the sagittal suture, with growth on the anterior and posterior margins of the parietal, produces a long or dolico-cephalic head; synotosis of the coronal gives rise to the platycephalic variety of the brachyeephalic head ; of the lambdoidal to the pachycephalic variety, and so on.

   • 1873, J. Barnard Davis, “Upon a Scaphoid Skull: A Letter from Prof. Luigi Calori to Dr. Barnard Davis”, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, page 147:

     I possess the skull of a woman of middle age, dolichocephalic, with a cephalic index of 77, and pachycephalic, which has no synostosis of any suture; and I have seen the cranium of a leptocephalic old woman, which not only has no synostosis of any suture, but in which, after maceration, the sutures were no longer sufficient to hold the bones of the vault toether, there being diastases, as in the crania of little children.

   • 1956, Ann paediatr fenn - Volume 2, page 70:

     Virchow stated that premature fusion of this suture results in pachycephalic deformity.

2. Thick-skulled; stupid and imperceptive.
   • 1880 July, “Progress In Science and the Arts”, in Engineering and Mining Journal, volume 30, page 8:

     The fact that the Adams patent should ever have received recognition in the temple of justice proves that a judge may be learned in the law, but woefully pachycephalic in matters scientific.

   • 1883, George Frederick Shrady, Thomas Lathrop Stedman, Medical Record - Volume 24, page 472:

     Some of the Westerners are so pachycephalic and vulgar that they fail utterly to appreciate such dainty delicacies.

   • 1905, American Medicine - Volume 10, page 936:

     Under such torrefaction the doctor suffered an ebullition of his anger and he replied : “You are rather pachycephalic not to understand what I have said.

   • 1967, Peter Zollinger, The Political Creature: An Evolutionary Reorientation, page 121:

     This should dawn on even the pachycephalic if it is pointed out that a society can exist without rich men, but no rich man can function without a society to exploit.