orthoteny

plural orthotenies

1. countableuncountablehuman sciencesThe study of straight lines, especially in regards to the flight paths that UFOs tend to follow.

   […] believes that he had discovered a new principle called orthoteny, according to which saucer-sightings of any given short period tend, far more often than chance would permit, form plottable straight lines of 3 or more points.

   1951, Anthony Boucher, J. Francis McComas, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, volume 16, Mercury Press, Incorporated, page 86

   2 more examples

   […] of flying saucer reports in France in 1954 supporting the author's theory of "orthoteny," i.e., the fact that he can connect the points at which flying saucers appeared each day with a series of straight lines radiating out from a central point.

   1958, Junior Libraries, volume 5, R.R. Bowker., page 117

   Michel dubbed the pattern "orthoteny” (from the Greek orthoteneis, meaning "stretched in a straight line"). During the 1954 wave, he argued, flying saucers appeared over the course of any given day along straight lines crisscrossing French territory.

   2024, Greg Eghigian, “4 From Mystery to Movement 1947-1960”, in After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon, illustrated, reprint edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 110