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Gather together various documents relating to the affairs of a certain individual, sort them into separate folders, label the spine of each folder, and arrange the folders in a box. Dossier, the French word for such a compendium of spine-labeled folders, was picked up by English speakers in the 19th century. It comes from dos, the French word for "back." The verb endorse (which originally meant "to write on the back of") and the rare adjective addorsed ("set or turned back to back," a term primarily used in heraldry) are also derived, via the Anglo-French endosser and French adosser respectively, from dos. The French dos has its origins in the Latin dorsum, a word which also gave English the adjective dorsal ("situated on the back"), as in "the dorsal fin of a whale."
Examples of dossier in a Sentence
Jennifer Leigh Parker, Forbes, 29 Oct. 2024
View Comments Klippenstein was hardly the only recipient of the dossier.
—Liam Reilly, CNN, 11 Oct. 2024
Klippenstein posted his Substack article, which includes the dossier, on X. His X account was then suspended because the post violated X's rules about posting others' private information, since the dossier included Vance's address and other identifying information.
—Victoria Moorwood, The Enquirer, 1 Oct. 2024
The dossier in question is a 271-page PDF purportedly compiled by Trump campaign researchers in February that mostly inventories Vance’s past public statements, many denouncing Trump before and after the 2016 election.
—Rob Pegoraro, PCMAG, 27 Sep. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Dossier.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dossier. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
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dossier
noun
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