toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

vertebrae
in a sentence

show 88 more with this conextual meaning
  • And more bones:
    Eighteen ribs from the torso of a child.
    Several vertebrae.
    A bone from a foot.
    One shoulder blade.
    One hip socket.
    Articles of clothing emerged from walls and from pits of ash and quicklime, including a girl's dress and bloodstained overalls.†   (source)
  • She picks up part of it, the sharp machine-tooled edges of its vertebrae pinching her gloves.†   (source)
  • Peter knew it was no coincidence that the spine was made up of exactly thirty-three vertebrae.†   (source)
  • I felt like the vertebrae in my spine were being welded together by a blowtorch.†   (source)
  • We didn't know until he got to Boston that the cancer had invaded his vertebrae."†   (source)
  • The past Wednesday, returning from two weeks of treatment at the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, her customary place of retirement, Mrs. Clutter had brought scarcely credible tidings to tell her husband; with joy she informed him that the source of her misery, so medical opinion had at last decreed, was not in her head but in her spine-it was physical, a matter of misplaced vertebrae.†   (source)
  • The final point of the treatment was a quick, careful twist of the neck, producing a cracking sound, releasing gas from the vertebrae, bringing an immediate sensation of relief.†   (source)
  • He rested his hand lightly on Paul's back, feeling his flesh, so warm and alive, and the delicate vertebrae just beneath his skin.†   (source)
  • Naked from the waist up, his vertebrae extruded from his skinny back as he hunched over the desk, working.†   (source)
  • The shark still hung there No? the old man said and he drove the blade between the vertebrae and the / " . brain It was an easy shot now and he felt the cartilage sever.†   (source)
  • When he leaned over the patient's belly to see our handiwork, cocked his skull on the atlas and axis vertebrae just so, tucked his arms to his chest, his scapulae gliding out, making himself small so as not to contaminate our field—those movements were echoes of my own.†   (source)
  • The force of the drop, combined with the position of the knot, is what's meant to fracture the cervical vertebrae and separate the spinal cord.†   (source)
  • Vertebrae, clavicles, scapulae, ribs forming the upper torso.†   (source)
  • He asked Valentina to forgive him before he reached out and in one movement broke her neck between the second and third cervical vertebrae.†   (source)
  • My neck was already sore from the effort of pulling my chin hard against the upper vertebrae.†   (source)
  • But Powell catches him, stabbing the courier just above the fourth vertebrae.†   (source)
  • The impact fractured two vertebrae in his back.†   (source)
  • From the rear—particularly where his vertebrae were visible—he might almost have passed for one of those needy metropolitan children who are sent out every summer to endowed camps to be fattened and sunned.†   (source)
  • He broke two vertebrae in his back and ruptured his stomach.†   (source)
  • Now he knew that it was only a foolish amulet, that La Fayette was like any ordinary man when it came to resisting Napoleon; and now that the amulet lay buried in a mass grave outside Detroit, no doubt still chained to the moldering vertebrae of Frederic de Maurepas, Napoleon knew that he would never find his equal in this world, unless it was God himself, or Nature.†   (source)
  • Does he get your vertebrae all in order with those slippery hands?†   (source)
  • Instantly he transferred his attention to the bare neck, pushing the thorn firmly against vertebrae.†   (source)
  • While making a tackle, the C3 and C4 vertebrae in his spinal cord were telescoped.
  • The last vertebrae from his tail went in.†   (source)
  • Or maybe they messed up on the vertebrae and had to reweld it or something.†   (source)
  • But the world needn't be presented with every single one of her vertebrae."†   (source)
  • He must have gotten lucky and hit a gap between vertebrae.†   (source)
  • Tyrannosaurs should only have thirty-seven vertebrae in the tall.†   (source)
  • Of course, I never realized I had three cracked vertebrae either.†   (source)
  • I know what vertebrae are," his father said, annoyed.†   (source)
  • She started with the skull, which was closest after all, and worked her way down the vertebrae.†   (source)
  • You know how many vertebrae belong in that tail.†   (source)
  • "Or a long tail," I said, looking at the skinny line of vertebrae trailing on the branch.†   (source)
  • I got back to work on the vertebrae, fiddly little things, but they popped out fairly easily.†   (source)
  • Prince Gellir slumped as though one of his vertebrae had disintegrated.†   (source)
  • The vertebrae in Pa's back were fused with bone from his hip; his stomach and big toe were repaired.†   (source)
  • Dr. Barnes removed the third, fourth, and fifth cervical vertebrae from Booth's neck.†   (source)
  • Doctors fused the vertebrae in his back with bone from his hip and repaired his stomach.†   (source)
  • I managed to gaff some of the shark's remains, but to my disappointment the vertebrae of sharks do not hold fluid.†   (source)
  • His head twisted involuntarily as his vertebrae slid into their niches, and strength returned in a rush as magic reproduced the three litres of blood lost through his chest wound.†   (source)
  • But it looks like a rat's tail with the flesh eaten away by acid, because it just consists of segments, hundreds of them neatly plugged together, like vertebrae.†   (source)
  • "It looks to be made of a different material than the vertebrae, and it's right over a central cluster of nerves.†   (source)
  • It was a great discovery when I found that a fresh-tasting fluid could be sucked out not only from the eyes of larger fish but also from their vertebrae.†   (source)
  • She must have been more out of alignment than I realized, and so the sudden realigning of the vertebrae created a temporary shock to her system.†   (source)
  • I'm counting the vertebrae," Tim said.†   (source)
  • Her hand moved to her neck, tracing the ridges of her spine as her gaze traveled over the metal vertebrae, those metallic invaders.†   (source)
  • She had not known about the metal vertebrae along her spine, or the four metal ribs, or the synthetic tissue around her heart, or the metal splints along the bones in her right leg.†   (source)
  • And then his father came back with a funny look on his face, because of course the guard told him that the tyrannosaurus had too many vertebrae in the tail.†   (source)
  • The vertebrae?†   (source)
  • She twisted her head as Dr. Erland walked around the table and placed the tips of his fingers on her neck, pinching the vertebrae just above her shoulders.†   (source)
  • Then her eye spotted the holograph behind him, still showing her inner workings—from the metal vertebrae to her bunched wires to her perfectly intact ovaries.†   (source)
  • His injuries seem to be similar to those of a car crash victim—it's hardly credible that anyone could do such damage with his bare hands: leg broken, ribs crushed, cervical vertebrae injured, plus there's a risk that he may be paralysed."†   (source)
  • The vertebrae are now housed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in the National Museum of Health and Medicine—although they are not on public display.†   (source)
  • In December 2010, Booth's descendants agreed to exhume the remains of Edwin Booth to see if DNA from his body is a match for the DNA in the vertebrae housed at Walter Reed.†   (source)
  • An X-ray on a bigger machine showed fractures of the eleventh and twelfth thoracic vertebrae.†   (source)
  • You have a vivid mental picture of the vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal fluid dripping out of them.†   (source)
  • He could feel the vertebrae in the back of his neck crack and pop from the strain of this unexpected work.†   (source)
  • He had to cut everything up handsomely, leaving two vertebrae on the tail to make the chine look attractive, and almost ever since he could remember he had been either pursuing a hart or cutting it up into helpings.†   (source)
  • The X-ray—we took a skull plate—shows a fracture and dislocation of the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae.†   (source)
  • "As you know," he began again, and now his tone carried a hint of the lecture room, of academic precision, "the plate showed in lateral view a fracture and dislocation of the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae.†   (source)
  • And he left, taking long strides and bent forward so that his neck vertebrae protruded.†   (source)
  • It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls.†   (source)
  • There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are not locked together.†   (source)
  • In the melancholy mood that had suddenly come over him, his neck vertebrae seemed to protrude even more than usual.†   (source)
  • "Good God!" said he, stooping down, and picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them more closely.†   (source)
  • "This tall red-headed piece of misinformation is the sporting editor of the Press," said Willis Ijams; and H. H. Hazen, the druggist, chanted, "Boys, when you're on a long motor tour and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and draw up and remark to the wife, 'This is certainly a romantic place,' it sends a glow right up and down your vertebrae.†   (source)
  • Director Behrens's son, Knut by name, came for a holiday visit and lived with his father in the residential wing—a pretty young man, whose neck vertebrae already stuck out a bit too far as well.†   (source)
  • Behrens was just emerging from the portico—tall, with protruding neck vertebrae, a bowler shoved to the back of his head, a cigar in his mouth, purple-cheeked and pop-eyed; he was at full swing in his daily routine, about to attend to his private practice and make calls in town, having just been on the job in the operating room, as he declared.†   (source)
  • He was a bony man, a good three heads taller than Dr. Krokowski, with a shock of white hair; his neck vertebrae stuck out, and his watery, bloodshot blue eyes protruded; he had a snub nose above a little short-cropped moustache, which sat slightly askew because his upper lip was turned up at one comer.†   (source)
  • …office—with the help of his assistant, a powerful, athletic Jewish lad, next to whom slender Elia with his round, blond beard seemed all the more delicate and frail—and had seen him flourish the large butcher knife and cut deep into the neck vertebrae of the bound and hobbled, but fully conscious animal, had seen the assistant catch the spurting, steaming blood in basins that filled rapidly, the boy had watched the spectacle with the eyes of a child, which see through externals to…†   (source)
  • …its mysterious symmetry of limbs, nourished by blood through a network of nerves, veins, arteries, capillaries, all oozing lymph; with its scaffold of bones, some of them tubes filled with marrow, some like blades, some like bulbs, some torqued vertebrae, but all originating in a gelatinous base that with the help of calcium salts and lime had grown Arm enough to support the rest; with its joints made of tendons, cartilage, and slippery, well-oiled balls and sockets; with its more than…†   (source)
  • They consist of two distinct series: the series of bony fish, in other words, those whose spines have vertebrae made of bone; and cartilaginous fish, in other words, those whose spines have vertebrae made of cartilage.†   (source)
  • The long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent shoulder blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the night shirt, and could not get the long, limp arm into it.†   (source)
  • Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged.†   (source)
  • I knew that to make such a machine of stone was far beyond my power, but it had struck me that the vertebrae of the whale might serve my purpose.†   (source)
  • Anatomically, it's distinguished from the white whale and the black right whale by the fusion of its seven cervical vertebrae, and it numbers two more ribs than its relatives.†   (source)
  • Thinking that the joints of the vertebrae might be made of use, I separated some ten or twelve, and rolled them down to the boat, and then returned to the shore, towing them after us.†   (source)
  • To cut down and divide this tree had taken us a couple of days, and on the third we carted home four large and two small blocks, and with the vertebrae joints of the whale I, in a very short time, completed my machine.†   (source)
  • This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one of the larger vertebrae, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer convex mould of it.†   (source)
  • As it passes through the remaining vertebrae the canal tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of large capacity.†   (source)
  • A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a sort of basso-relievo, the beaked prow of his canoe.†   (source)
  • If you attentively regard almost any quadruped's spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper.†   (source)
  • When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man.†   (source)
  • The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved with Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth its vapoury spout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted Damocles.†   (source)
  • The fluid throbbed out of his vertebrae as he lay stretched upon the earth.†   (source)
  • He stroked my back gently, fingers tracing the bumps of the vertebrae.†   (source)
  • The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such…†   (source)
  • …in reversed direction waistcoat, trousers, shirt and vest along the medial line of irregular incrispated black hairs extending in triangular convergence from the pelvic basin over the circumference of the abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along the medial line of nodes to the intersection of the sixth pectoral vertebrae, thence produced both ways at right angles and terminating in circles described about two equidistant points, right and left, on the summits of the mammary prominences.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)