umbilicus

American  

[uhm-bil-i-kuhs, uhm-buh-lahy-kuhs] / ʌmˈbɪl ɪ kəs, ˌʌm bəˈlaɪ kəs /

noun

• umbilici
  plural

1. Anatomy. the depression in the center of the surface of the abdomen indicating the point of attachment of the umbilical cord to the embryo; navel.

2. Botany, Zoology. a navellike formation, as the hilum of a seed.

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umbilicus British  

/ ʌmˈbɪlɪˌfɔːm, ˌʌmbɪˈlaɪkəs, ʌmˈbɪlɪkəs /

noun

1. biology a hollow or navel-like structure, such as the cavity at the base of a gastropod shell

2. anatomy a technical name for the navel

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• umbiliform
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• umbilici
  plural

Etymology

Origin of umbilicus

1605–15; < Latin umbilīcus navel, middle, center; see navel

Explanation

Your umbilicus is your bellybutton. It's the place on your stomach where your umbilical cord was attached before you were born. Just call it a bellybutton or navel unless you're a fancy medical writer. Umbilicus is the official anatomical term for your navel or bellybutton. Most people don't give much thought to their umbilicus, which is really a scar marking the spot where a cord once connected to your source of nutrients when you were a fetus in your mother's body. After babies are born, this cord is cut, and the result is an umbilicus. In Latin, the word means both "navel" and "the center."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

umbilicus umbilici

When one falls in love with a patient who is a famous actor, the umbilicus that had sustained them all their lives is pierced for the first time.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 21, 2023

It was his and his alone, an incandescent umbilicus connecting this seven-year-old boy to the firmament.

From The Verge ● Jun. 25, 2018

The surgeons began by making incisions above the umbilicus and beneath the left and right sides of the rib cage.

From The New Yorker ● Sep. 19, 2016

The small skiffs, each provisioned with gas, net, cooler, and life jackets, form a bobbing line against the early dawn sky, an umbilicus connecting our ship to the sea.

From Scientific American ● Oct. 30, 2015

There was, for instance, a scarcity of hope on Middlesex, where his wife no longer felt any stirrings in her spiritual umbilicus.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

Or, pursuing our peregrinations, we plunge suddenly into the abyss of origins, transformed for the moment into slumbering umbilici, skirting the shores of our nativity; or, ascending spine-wise, traverse the hierarchy of gifts.

From Tablets by Amos Bronson Alcott

To these staves, strings, known as "umbilici," were attached, to the ends of which bullae or weights were fixed.

From Forty Centuries of Ink or, a chronological narrative concerning ink and its backgrounds, introducing incidental observations and deductions, parallels of time and color phenomena, bibliography, chemistry, poetical effusions, citations, anecdotes and curiosa together with some evidence respecting the evanescent character of most inks of to-day and an epitome of chemico-legal ink. by David Nunes Carvalho

The books when rolled up, were bound up with these umbilici, and were generally kept in cylindrical boxes or capsae, a term from which the Mediaeval "capsula," or book-cover was derived.

From Forty Centuries of Ink or, a chronological narrative concerning ink and its backgrounds, introducing incidental observations and deductions, parallels of time and color phenomena, bibliography, chemistry, poetical effusions, citations, anecdotes and curiosa together with some evidence respecting the evanescent character of most inks of to-day and an epitome of chemico-legal ink. by David Nunes Carvalho