Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to the occiput or to the occipital bone.
  • noun The occipital bone.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of, pertaining to, or connected with the occiput or hindhead: opposed to sincipital.
  • Having a comparatively large cerebellum, as a person or people; having the hind part of the head more developed than the front.
  • In entomology See foramen.
  • Small, a branch of the second cervical nerve, supplying a portion of the back part of the scalp and the occipitalis and attollens aurem muscles. Also called occipitalis minor.
  • The intersection of the visual axis with the spherical field of regard behind the head.
  • Internal, the point of intersection of the vertical and horizontal ridges on the inner surface of the occipital bone.
  • In craniometry, one of two triangles, the superior and the inferior, having the biparietal and bimastoid diameters for their bases respectively, and their apices at the inion.
  • noun In zoology and anatomy, the occipital bone; the bone of the hindhead; a compound bone, consisting of a basioccipital, a supra-occipital, and a pair of exoccipital bones, circumscribing the foramen magnum, and together constituting the first or occipital segment of the skull.
  • noun In herpetology, one of a pair of plates or scutes upon the occiput of many serpents. See cut under Coluber.
  • noun The occipitalis muscle.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) The occipital bone.
  • adjective (Anat.) Of or pertaining to the occiput, or back part of the head, or to the occipital bone.
  • adjective (Anat.) the bone which forms the posterior segment of the skull and surrounds the great foramen by which the spinal cord leaves the cranium. In the higher vertebrates it is usually composed of four bones, which become consolidated in the adult.
  • adjective (Anat.) the point of the occiput in the mesial plane farthest from the ophryon.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the occiput (back of the head) or the occipital bone.
  • noun anatomy The occipital bone.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to the occiput

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin occipitalis, from Latin occiput ("the back of the head"), from ob ("over against") + caput ("head").

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Examples

  • The position of the tentorium can easily be ascertained in your own head by the fact that where it crosses the median line there is a little projection of bone called the occipital knob, very prominent on some persons, barely perceptible on others.

    Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 Volume 1, Number 3 1856

  • I passed my hand absently across my hair - what Dixon had described as the occipital region.

    Movie Night 2010

  • Above the foramen magnum the median supra-occipital bone completes what is called the occipital arch.

    Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata 1906

  • One such therapy, called occipital nerve stimulation, appears promising in the treatment of cluster headaches and migraines, studies show, although larger studies are needed.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • At first scholars thought that there had to be a command center within the brain to synthesize all the different functions exercised by the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and so forth—a command center to coordinate all this activity in order to be able to tell the limbs, the lungs, and so forth what to do.

    In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

  • Attention has focused on the “verbal conceptual association area,” located at the junction of the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes of the brain.

    In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

  • My first bullet pierced the frontal bone of his skull above his right eye and exited through the left occipital bone.

    Shortcut Man P. G. Sturges 2011

  • A cotillion of neurons did their bob-and-whirl in my occipital lobe, and that created an electrical whoosh that the electrodes could easily pick up.

    World Wide Mind Michael chorost 2011

  • Both groups suffered injuries most often in the occipital region at the back of the head.

    A New Weapon in the Fight Against Superbugs Ann Lukits 2012

  • I felt very sorry for the man with occipital neuralgia, which causes intense stabbing pain on one side of the head, but my pain was bilateral and felt like pressure, not electrical shocks.

    Chocolate & Vicodin Jennette Fulda 2011

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