sulcus

English

Lateral sulcus (fissure on the surface of the brain)

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin sulcus (“a furrow made by a plow”). Doublet of sullow ("plough").

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsʌl.kəs/
• Rhymes: -ʌlkəs

Noun

sulcus (plural sulci)

1. (anatomy) A furrow or groove in an organ or a tissue, especially that marking the convolutions of the surface of the brain.

   Synonym: fissure

   Hyponyms: central sulcus, cruciate sulcus, lateral sulcus

   Coordinate term: gyrus

   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 186:

     The Union’s soft latex-polymer roof is cerebrally domed and a cloudy piamater pink except in spots where it’s eroded down to pasty gray, and everywhere textured, the bulging rooftop, with sulci and bulbous convolutions.

   • 1999, Thomas C. Pritchard, Kevin D. Alloway, Medical Neuroscience‎^[1], page 55:

     The largest sulcus, the longitudinal fissure, divides the brain into left and right hemispheres.

   • 2006, Inderbir Singh, Textbook of Human Neuroanatomy‎^[2], 7th edition, page 72:

     Unlike most other sulci, the lateral sulcus is very deep.

   • 2014, John Kiernan, Raj Rajakumar, Barr's The Human Nervous System: An Anatomical Viewpoint‎^[3], 10th edition, page 213:

     The large surface area of the human cerebral cortex results in a pattern of gyri and sulci.

2. (planetology) A region of subparallel grooves or ditches formed by a geological process.

Derived terms

• gluteal sulcus
• hemisulcus
• hyposulcus
• intermammary sulcus
• pseudosulcus
• sulcal
• sulcate
• sulciform
• sulcus cutis

Translations

furrow or groove in an organ or a tissue

• Arabic: تَلَم m (talam)
• Bulgarian: вдлъбнатина (bg) f (vdlǎbnatina), бразда (bg) f (brazda)
• Czech: zářez (cs) m, rýha (cs) f, brázda f
• Esperanto: sulko (eo)
• Finnish: uurre (fi)
• German: Furche (de) f
• Hungarian: barázda (hu)
• Slovak: ryha f

groove on the surface of the brain

• Arabic: ثَلْم m (ṯalm)
• Bulgarian: мозъчна гънка f (mozǎčna gǎnka)
• Finnish: aivouurre (fi)
• Hungarian: barázda (hu), agybarázda (hu)
• Portuguese: sulco (pt) m
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: бра́зда f

  Roman: brázda (sh) f

• Spanish: surco (es) m

References

• “sulcus”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “sulcus”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Latin

Etymology

From Proto-Italic *solkos, from Proto-Indo-European *solk-o-s (“furrow”), *selk- (“to pull, drag”), whence also Old English sulh. Doublet of holcus.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈsul.kus/, [ˈs̠ʊɫ̪kʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈsul.kus/, [ˈsulkus]

Noun

sulcus m (genitive sulcī); second declension

1. (agriculture) A furrow made by a plow.

   Synonym: fossa

2. (transferred sense):
   1. (agriculture) Ploughing.
   2. : (of things resembling a furrow)
      1. A long, narrow trench; a ditch.
      2. (in general) A rut or track.

Inflection

Second-declension noun.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	sulcus	sulcī
Genitive	sulcī	sulcōrum
Dative	sulcō	sulcīs
Accusative	sulcum	sulcōs
Ablative	sulcō	sulcīs
Vocative	sulce	sulcī

Derived terms

• bisulcus
• sulcus primigenius

 

Descendants

Descendants of sulcus

• Catalan: solc
• → English: sulcus
• Friulian: solç
• Galician: suco
• Italian: solco
• Neapolitan: surco
• Piedmontese: sorch
• Portuguese: suco
• → Portuguese: sulco
• → Romanian: sulc
• Sardinian: surcu
• Sicilian: surcu
• → Spanish: sulco, surco
• Venetan: solco, solç, solzh

References

• “sulcus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “sulcus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• sulcus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• sulcus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7)‎^[4], Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN