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Glite Dictionary
dorsoventrally

dorsoventrally

9.9
From the back toward the belly of a body or leaf
  • adverb
  • /ˌdɔrsəʊˈvɛntrəli/
  • Specialized
: dorsoventralmente
  • The anatomy lesson focused on how the heart is positioned dorsoventrally in the body.

Examples

  • Melibe leonina, like Tritonia, flexes its whole body when it swims, but it does so laterally rather than dorsoventrally, using different muscles.

    Academic text (2009)

  • They too copulated, this time dorsoventrally, the position typical of common chimpanzees and most other mammals.

    Academic text (1990)

  • The frog moved dorsoventrally as it leaped from one lily pad to another.

  • During dissection, we observed how the organism's organs were arranged dorsoventrally.

Surface Forms

dorsoventrally positive

Morphology

dorsoventrally = dorsoventral (transparent) = dorsoventral + ly

The adverb is formed by adding the productive adverbial suffix '-ly' to the adjective 'dorsoventral', and its meaning follows directly from that base (back-to-belly axis).

Etymology

Dorsoventrally joins dorso- ('back') and ventral ('belly') to describe a direction or shape from the back to the belly. Think of a fish's dorsal fin on its back and the belly under it, which shows why dorsoventrally means along the back-to-belly line.