Dorsal

How to spell dorsal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dorsal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dorsal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or situated on the back or upper surface of an animal, organ, or body part.

Dorsal in a sentence

• The shark's dorsal fin cut through the surface of the water.

• The surgeon examined the dorsal surface of the patient's hand.

Where does dorsal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin dorsum, which simply meant 'the back', the rear surface of the body or of an object. From it Latin formed the adjective dorsalis, 'belonging to the back', and English borrowed the term in the 1400s, largely through French dorsal, as a precise word for anatomists and naturalists. It has always sat in the technical vocabulary of biology and medicine, contrasting with ventral, which describes the belly side. The same dorsum root surfaces in the architectural and military word 'endorse', literally to write something on the back of a document, and in the geographical sense of a 'dorsum' for a long ridge. The spelling is reliably regular: it keeps the Latin dors- stem intact, so the only thing to remember is the single s before the -al ending.

How the word is built

• dors- (back, from Latin dorsum)
• -al (adjective suffix)