vestigial
of, relating to, or of the nature of a vestige: a vestigial tail.
Origin of vestigial
1Other words from vestigial
- ves·tig·i·al·ly, adverb
Words Nearby vestigial
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use vestigial in a sentence
Displeasing will probably always stir up some vestigial guilt.
Carolyn Hax: Letting others know you’re the good Samaritan, not the gatekeeper | Carolyn Hax | April 11, 2021 | Washington PostIt’s always been the evening’s unofficial highest honor, but only in a vestigial sense since the dawn of the iPod — and that’s if you ever considered it an honor in the first place.
Album of the year is the Grammy that nobody deserves to win | Chris Richards | March 12, 2021 | Washington PostOld people and their obsession with secrecy, vestigial limb of a world where secrets still existed.
There will be vestigial tailbones and dangling dewclaws for some time to come, but the point is to set our sights for our best selves and not our worst.
Dawn of the Heliocene - Issue 90: Something Green | Summer Praetorius | September 16, 2020 | NautilusEnsembles are of vestigial interest in this new pop culture.
Van Dyke Parks on How Songwriters Are Getting Screwed in the Digital Age | Van Dyke Parks | June 4, 2014 | THE DAILY BEAST
Such myths, Manchester argues, may be vestigial in the modern era, but they remain vital to the cohesion of a culture.
Three Great Men Died That Day: JFK, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley | John Garth | November 3, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTThe scandals now reverberating through Washington reduce to zero any last vestigial possibility of further action on jobs.
Because a foodie is a mouth with a vestigial person attached, one might think so.
It is safe to suppose that our needs are like those of the race and that in us nothing is vestigial that is active in others.
The Kempton-Wace Letters | Jack LondonOr, on the other hand, may not such faculty be regarded not as vestigial, but as rudimentary?
Occultism and Common-Sense | Beckles WillsonWhatever lightness or joy survived was the meaningless vestigial twitching of an obsolete organ.
The Syndic | C.M. KornbluthWe now call these toes "vestigial," and know the pig's ancestors used them, walking on four toes and not on two, as at present.
The Meaning of Evolution | Samuel Christian SchmuckerSimilar vestigial teeth, 5-40 in number, sometimes occur in goosebeaked whales (p. 70).
Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises of the Western North Atlantic | Stephen Leatherwood
British Dictionary definitions for vestigial
/ (vɛˈstɪdʒɪəl) /
of, relating to, or being a vestige
(of certain organs or parts of organisms) having attained a simple structure and reduced size and function during the evolution of the species: the vestigial pelvic girdle of a snake
Derived forms of vestigial
- vestigially, adverb
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for vestigial
[ vĕ-stĭj′ē-əl ]
Relating to a body part that has become small and lost its use because of evolutionary change. Whales, for example, have small bones located in the muscles of their body walls that are vestigial bones of hips and hind limbs.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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