vertebra
any of the bones or segments composing the spinal column, consisting typically of a cylindrical body and an arch with various processes, and forming a foramen, or opening, through which the spinal cord passes.
Origin of vertebra
1Words Nearby vertebra
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use vertebra in a sentence
The bullet had burst her C5 vertebra, but, remarkably, the round had tumbled millimeters past her major arteries and narrowly missed severing her spine.
Two kids, a loaded gun and the man who left a 4-year-old to die | John Woodrow Cox | September 27, 2021 | Washington PostIt introduced readers to Tina Brooks, a former police officer who fractured a vertebra in her back and damaged three others in her neck when she plunged 15 feet down a steep quarry while training for bicycle patrol.
Loan Forgiveness for Disabled Borrowers Was 10 Years in the Making | by Stephen Engelberg | September 8, 2021 | ProPublicaIt includes five percussion speeds and comes with five heads, including a fork head to get muscles close to the vertebrae.
Best back massager: Target your sore spots and release that tension for sweet relief | Irena Collaku | August 12, 2021 | Popular-ScienceLarge bone fragments and teeth appear to be well-preserved, but smaller bones like vertebrae or thin rib bones likely didn’t survive as well.
To find answers about the 1921 race massacre, Tulsa digs up its painful past | Helen Thompson | May 27, 2021 | Science NewsThese vertebrae also preserve annual growth bands, like the rings of a tree, showing how the fish grew.
Newborn megalodon sharks were larger than most adult humans | Carolyn Gramling | January 12, 2021 | Science News
I have no idea when the second vertebra went out during the battle.
Send Bin Laden the Bill: Dakota Meyer on His Return From Afghanistan | Dakota Meyer | September 29, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTOne vertebra had given way in Ganjigal when I picked up an Askar and slipped in the bloody mud under him.
Send Bin Laden the Bill: Dakota Meyer on His Return From Afghanistan | Dakota Meyer | September 29, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTSuch a contrivance would save his feet, check his perspiration, and console his dorsal vertebra.
Our Churches and Chapels | AtticusBut I also find the petrified vertebra of an antediluvian animal upon which the Trojans have carved a large owls head.
Troy and its Remains | Henry (Heinrich) SchliemannThe ball passed through the liver and diaphragm, and lodged in the vertebra.
Great Events in the History of North and South America | Charles A. GoodrichPleurapoph′ysis, a lateral process of a vertebra, with the morphological character of a rib:—pl.
Probably not; and more especially if it is a lumbar artery, and injured in the foramen through which it passes from the vertebra.
Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society | Joseph Bradford Cox
British Dictionary definitions for vertebra
/ (ˈvɜːtɪbrə) /
one of the bony segments of the spinal column
Origin of vertebra
1Derived forms of vertebra
- vertebral, adjective
- vertebrally, adverb
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for vertebra
[ vûr′tə-brə ]
Any of the bones that make up the vertebral column. Each vertebra contains an arched, hollow section through which the spinal cord passes. In humans, the vertebrae are divided into cervical, thoracic, and lumbar sections, and the sacrum and coccyx are both made up of a series of fused vertebrae. The vertebrae are separated by cartilaginous intervertebral disks. See more at skeleton.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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