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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
Brett Murphy, ProPublica, 15 Jan. 2025
In fact, just a few of Trump’s picks are primed to move into their new jobs on Day One: Sen. Marco Rubio’s dossier to become Secretary of State; Rep. Elise Stefanik for the U.N. Ambassador gig; and former Rep. John Ratcliffe to helm the CIA.
—Philip Elliott, TIME, 8 Jan. 2025
On the day we were born, we each had been assigned a dossier by the Communist Party, into which everything that happened in our lives would be recorded.
—Yiyun Li, Harper's Magazine, 2 Nov. 2024
Many of the dossier’s claims, vetted by special counsel and FBI investigations, were either proven untrue or were never corroborated.
—Ashley Oliver, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 8 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Dossier.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dossier. Accessed 23 Jan. 2025.
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dossier
noun
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