​APHORISM is a term used to denote either an unconnected maxim, or a short pointed sentence, comprising much in a few words. It is at present chiefly used in medicine, and law: thus we say, the Aphorisms of Boerhaave, Hippocrates, of the Civil Law, &c.

It would be highly conducive to the progress of learning, if all elementary works, which treat of any ​particular art or science, were written in an aphoristic form, so that every detached fact, or assertion, might be reduced to a distinct proposition.