interdigitate
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of interdigitate
Explanation
To interdigitate means to fit or weave together, like the way your fingers lock when clasping your hands. The word interdigitate combines the Latin roots for "between" and "fingers," describing the way things fit together like interlocking fingers. This concept is often used in science and engineering to explain how structures, such as gears or bone joints, interlock to function seamlessly. For example, in biology, the overlapping grooves of a skull’s sutures interdigitate to create a strong and stable connection.
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:
Figure 25.11 Podocytes Podocytes interdigitate with structures called pedicels and filter substances in a way similar to fenestrations.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 19, 2013
These projections interdigitate to form filtration slits, leaving small gaps between the digits to form a sieve.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 19, 2013
Its members interdigitate with their next neighbors in manifold directions, and there are no clean cuts between them anywhere.
From A Pluralistic Universe Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy by James, William
If this be an objectively moral universe, all acts that I make on that assumption, all expectations that I ground on it, will tend more and more completely to interdigitate with the phenomena already existing.
From The Will to Believe : and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by James, William
The ranges of the two species do not overlap in the strict sense but interdigitate in a parapatric type of distribution.
From Geographic Variation in the Pocket Gopher, Thomys bottae, in Colorado by Youngman, Phillip M.
Over a great space of ground the sidings of the rail-head spread, the normal gauge rail-head spread out like a fan and interdigitated with the narrow gauge lines that go up practically to the guns.
From War and the future: Italy, France and Britain at war by Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
The researchers fabricated the new device with redesigned interdigitating electrodes that induce cell rotation and a microchannel for cell passage.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 11, 2023
In this position, however, the structures interdigitating with the horny laminæ are not sensitive, but are themselves horny.
From Diseases of the Horse's Foot by Reeks, Harry Caulton
They are firmly joined by bony processes; the interdigitating nature of this articulation contrasts with its homologue in the adult, the point where the roughened corners of the forelobes and hind lobes meet.
From Natural History of the Ornate Box Turtle, Terrapene ornata ornata Agassiz by Legler, John M.
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.
