Ventral

How to spell ventral

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ventral

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ventral mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the underside or belly side of an animal's body, as opposed to the back.

Ventral in a sentence

• The fish has a pale ventral surface and a darker back.

• The surgeon noted a small scar on the ventral side of the abdomen.

Where does ventral come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin adjective ventralis, meaning 'of the belly', which was built on the noun venter, literally 'belly' or 'stomach'. In anatomy the term came to describe the underside or front of an animal's body, the surface where the belly is, in deliberate contrast to dorsal, which refers to the back. English adopted ventral as a scientific term in the early 1700s, when naturalists and physicians were busy borrowing precise Latin vocabulary to label the parts of bodies they were dissecting and classifying. The same venter root survives in the medical word 'ventricle', a small cavity or chamber, originally a little belly-shaped hollow in the heart or brain. Because the spelling keeps the Latin 'ventr-' stem intact, the trap for writers is simply remembering the silent-feeling middle and the plain '-al' ending rather than any exotic letters.

How the word is built

• ventr- (from Latin venter: belly)
• -al (adjective suffix)