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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
Hugh Hart, Los Angeles Times, 17 June 2025
Perkins Coie had long drawn Trump’s ire for advising Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign and working with an opposition research firm tied to the discredited Steele dossier.
—Ella Lee, The Hill, 1 June 2025
These scenes—of characters exploring Cape Town or navigating London or wandering around different parts of the boat—should be a dossier of vivid sensations and interpersonal drama.
—Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 19 May 2025
Related: The mysterious group Canary Mission compiles public dossiers of those critical of Israel.
—Natasha Frost, New York Times, 2 Apr. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Dossier.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dossier. Accessed 12 Jul. 2025.
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dossier
noun
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