mandible
Americannoun
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mandibles
plural
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the bone of the lower jaw.
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(in birds)
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the lower part of the bill.
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mandibles, the upper and lower parts of the bill.
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(in arthropods) one of the first pair of mouthpart appendages, typically a jawlike biting organ, but styliform or setiform in piercing and sucking species.
noun
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the lower jawbone in vertebrates See jaw
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either of a pair of mouthparts in insects and other arthropods that are usually used for biting and crushing food
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ornithol either the upper or the lower part of the bill, esp the lower part
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The lower part of the jaw in vertebrate animals.
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See more at skeleton
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One of the pincerlike mouthparts of insects and other arthropods.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of mandible
1375–1425; late Middle English < Late Latin mandibula jaw, equivalent to mandi- (combining form of Latin mandere to chew) + -bula noun suffix of means
Explanation
Do you know where your mandible is located? Your mandible is your jawbone. Without a mandible, you wouldn't be able to eat pizza. In vertebrates (including humans), the mandible is the lower, hinged part of the jaw; in birds, both the top and bottom sections of the beak are called mandibles. The Latin root is mandere, "to chew," and chewing is the main function of the mandible, which holds your lower teeth in place and swings freely up and down.
Vocabulary lists containing mandible
Gross, Anatomy!
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Human Anatomy and Physiology - High School
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Animals (Zoology) - Middle School
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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:
Holding your mandible in place with your hands, or one of Kim Kardashian’s Skims Seamless Sculpt Face Wraps™, is prohibited.
From Salon ● Nov. 6, 2025
The county medical examiner’s office tried for years to find the owner of the errant piece of mandible, but their DNA databases turned up no matches.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 20, 2024
“It’s a convincing case,” Ward says, “but it’s just one mandible until about 2 million years ago,” when at least two members of the genus, Homo habilis and H. erectus, appear elsewhere in eastern Africa.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 3, 2024
It is thought that their elongated mandible and trunk may have co-evolved in this group, but this change among early to late proboscideans remains incompletely understood.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 28, 2023
Bill straight, slender, base higher than broad; superior mandible sometimes notched, the inferior straight.
From Zoological Illustrations, Volume III or Original Figures and Descriptions of New, Rare, or Interesting Animals by William Swainson
This time, that dude is New Zealand’s Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, a game 7-foot-3 actor whose eyes bulge behind those motorized mandibles and sometimes shine with feeling.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2025
In his travels, Tocqueville saw pieces of the famous Plymouth Rock all over: used as doorstops, as paperweights, set in the centers of mantels like the mandibles of sainted martyrs.
From Slate ● Nov. 28, 2024
Their hunting expeditions are dangerous because termite soldiers defend their conspecifics -- and use their powerful mandibles to do so.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 2, 2024
The Maori and Moriori skeletal remains, including skulls without mandibles, craniums, loose mandibles and maxilla fragments, were largely collected by Austrian taxidermist and grave robber Andreas Reischek from 1877 to 1889.
From Reuters ● Oct. 2, 2022
But anyhow' it was alive; it crept about within his closed hand, not biting him: as with most small spiders, its mandibles could not puncture human skin.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
