abdominal
Americanadjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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.
She was suffering from an abdominal infection and "her condition continued to worsen", the Bureau of the Royal Household said in a statement, until she "passed away peacefully" on Thursday evening.
From Barron's • Jun. 12, 2026
"Ultimately, we decided we're going to stop pursuing it, because if they could do it, it'd be quite a dangerous, open abdominal surgery," she added.
From BBC • May 30, 2026
Common symptoms include persistent diarrhea, abdominal pain, fatigue, and other complications that can significantly affect daily life.
From Science Daily • May 9, 2026
Hepburn died of abdominal cancer on Jan. 20, 1993, at the age of 63.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 8, 2026
He felt pain in his lower chest, they said, when the artery's blood escaped into his abdominal cavity.
From "Ambushed!" by Gail Jarrow
Definitions 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.
