sternum

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the flat bone at the front of the chest to which the ribs or their cartilages attach; the breastbone

   The seat belt left a bruise across his sternum after the collision.

2. 2
   noun

   a hardened plate on the underside of an arthropod body segment, especially in spiders and insects

   The biologist examined the spider's sternum between the bases of its legs.

Borrowed from New Latin sternum, based on Greek sternon, 'chest or breastbone.' Anatomists established it as the name of the central bone at the front of the vertebrate chest; zoologists extended it to comparable hardened ventral plates in arthropods.

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