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Glite Dictionary
sagittally

sagittally

1 9.3
Along a line that divides the body into left and right parts
  • adverb
  • /səˈdʒɪtəli/
  • Specialized
: sagitalmente
  • The MRI scans were taken sagittally to provide a detailed view of the patient's brain from left to right.
  • sagittally oriented levator
  • sagittally oriented

Examples

  • In anatomy class, we learned how to slice the specimen sagittally to observe its internal structure.

  • The surgeon made an incision sagittally to access both hemispheres of the brain.

  • 16 m cerebellar-brain stem sections were cut sagittally using a cryostat (Leica).

    Academic text (2017)

Surface Forms

sagittally positive

Morphology

sagittally = sagittal (transparent) = sagittal + ly

Regular adverb formation from the adjective 'sagittal' using the productive suffix '-ly', so the meaning is directly predictable from the base.

Etymology

The word sagittally comes from the Latin root sagitta, which means 'arrow'. Think of an arrow moving from front to back through the body, making a line that divides left and right, so to do something sagittally is to do it along that front-to-back line that separates the left and right sides.