abdominal
Americanadjective
noun
-
abdominals
plural
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of abdominal
Explanation
Anything abdominal relates to the midsection of your body, just below your chest and above your pelvis. Abdominal muscles are sometimes called “abs” and they’re the muscles in your abdomen. All abdominal things relate to the belly area. If your stomach hurts, you have abdominal pain. Sit-ups are abdominal exercises. Do enough sit-ups and you'll have washboard abs because the rippled muscles look like, well, a washboard. Any stomach surgery is a type of abdominal surgery. Sometimes abdominal is used as a noun that’s short for abdominal muscle.
Vocabulary lists containing abdominal
Turtles All the Way Down
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The Hot Zone
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Stuart Little
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Australia head coach Andrew McDonald said Green is "progressing well" from an abdominal injury, while Inglis has started batting again after suffering a broken finger.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
She had been experiencing severe abdominal pain since March and thought the coil was to blame.
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026
Such symptoms include gas, abdominal pain, bloating, and diarrhea or nausea, after consuming a certain amount of dairy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2026
Both studies are designed as randomized, placebo-controlled trials that will investigate whether CBL-514 can safely and effectively reduce abdominal fat without surgery.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2026
They made an incision over his liver and pulled back the abdominal muscles.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
Combining inhalation with movement can teach the body to use the trunk muscles in a different way, Wiebe said, so you’re no longer relying only on your abdominals.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 12, 2021
Women tend to be more flexible and sometimes overextend their low backs, and we just need to do a little maintenance to keep our low abdominals, low back, and pelvic floor strong and working together.
From Slate ● May 13, 2020
The exercise above—a modified Turkish sit-up—improves strength in the abdominals and upper back.
From Golf Digest ● Oct. 24, 2019
Few sports ask as much of the human body as cross-country skiing, which engages virtually every muscle group — legs, arms, abdominals, back — for hours at a time.
From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2018
She’ll have to make sure to add some crunches and leg lifts to strengthen her abdominals and her glutes.
From "A Heart in a Body in the World" by Deb Caletti
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
