Definitions

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

  • noun A flat narrow thigh muscle, the longest of the human anatomy, crossing the front of the thigh obliquely from the hip to the inner side of the tibia.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The longest muscle of the human body, crossing the thigh obliquely in front.

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

  • noun (Anat.) A muscle of the thigh, called the tailor's muscle, which arises from the hip bone and is inserted just below the knee. So named because its contraction was supposed to produce the position of the legs assumed by the tailor in sitting.

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

  • noun anatomy A long thin muscle that runs down the length of the thigh; the longest muscle in the human body.

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

  • noun a muscle in the thigh that helps to rotate the leg into the sitting position assumed by a tailor; the longest muscle in the human body

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin, from Late Latin sartor, tailor (from its producing the cross-legged position of a tailor at work), from sartus, past participle of sarcīre, to mend.]

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Examples

  • The spot where it goes under the sartorius is the one selected for the application of the ligature.

    A Manual of the Operations of Surgery For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners Joseph Bell 1874

  • The sartorius muscle was cut and the femoral vessels dissected in such a way as to enable them to retain a considerable length.

    Alexis Carrel - Nobel Lecture 1967

  • Longitudinal section of the sartorius muscle of the frog.

    August Krogh - Nobel Lecture 1967

  • It is found that A is independent of temperature, having, in the case of the sartorius muscle, always a value of about 1/6; B, which we may regard as the inverse of the "efficiency of maintaining a contraction", depends on the type of muscle, on temperature, on fatigue, and on many other factors.

    Archibald V. Hill - Nobel Lecture 1965

  • In the study of the thermal changes the most consistent and valuable results have been obtained by utilizing the isometric contraction of the sartorius muscle of the frog.

    Archibald V. Hill - Nobel Lecture 1965

  • In the muscle twitch of a frog's sartorius at 20°C the rise of temperature is not more than 0. 003°, and the time occupied in the earlier phases (as distinguished from the recovery process) is only a few hundredths of a second.

    Archibald V. Hill - Nobel Lecture 1965

  • The sartorius muscle is a very suitable medium for this investigation, insofar as it is practically of uniform cross-section and consists of straight fibres running along its length.

    Archibald V. Hill - Nobel Lecture 1965

  • The steps of the operation performed at the situation W, where the artery is about to pass beneath the sartorius, are these: an incision of sufficient length -- from two to three inches -- is to be made over the course of the vessel, so as to divide the skin and adipose membrane, and expose the fascia lata, through which the inner edge of the sartorius muscle becomes now readily discernible.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • The sartorius muscle covered by a process of the fascia lata.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • The femoral vessels, O N W, in the upper third of the thigh traverse a triangular space, the base of which is formed by Poupart's ligament, D, whilst the sides and apex are formed by the sartorius, Q, and adductor longus muscles, T, approaching each other.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

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