Symmetry — A Vocabulary Story
The Mirror Garden of Belvedere
Nushi crouched in the box hedges of Belvedere Palace, clutching her grandfather's stolen sketchbook. Somewhere in these gardens, the thief Mario had hidden the missing emerald, and her grandfather would lose his job as curator unless she found it before dawn.
The sketchbook held a single clue: a pencilled note about the symmetry of the parterre. Nushi studied the gardens spread before her, glittering under the moon. Every fountain on the left matched a fountain on the right. Every clipped yew on the east mirrored one on the west. The symmetry was perfect, almost ruthless.
Symmetry means the property of having exactly similar parts that mirror each other on opposite sides.
Almost.
She walked the central path, comparing. A stone urn on the left held white roses; its twin on the right held white roses too. A cherub aimed his bow east; another aimed west. Then she saw it: one gravel circle had been raked into neat rings, while its partner across the lawn had been disturbed, breaking the symmetry her grandfather had maintained for twenty years.
Nushi knelt and dug. Her fingers struck cold metal. The emerald, wrapped in oilcloth, blinked green in her palm.
Footsteps crunched behind her. Mario stepped from the shadows, but Nushi was already running, the stone hard in her fist, her route plotted along the garden's mirrored symmetry, every turn matched by another, until she burst through the gate shouting for the guards.
Word Definition
symmetry
meaning
the property of having exactly similar parts that mirror each other on opposite sides
synonyms
balance · proportion · harmony · equilibrium · coherence
antonyms
asymmetry · imbalance · disunity
example sentence
The symmetry of the building's design was pleasing to the eye.