Definition of dossier
: a file containing detailed records on a particular person or subject the patient's medical dossier Police began compiling a dossier on him.
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Recent Examples of dossier from the Web
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The FBI has not corroborated the most sensational assertions in the dossier.
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Senator John McCain, a former target of candidate Trump’s invective, acquired the anti-Trump dossier and made sure that the FBI investigated the phony dirt.
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Trump accused Comey of trying to save his job by leveraging a dossier of compromising material on the president.
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Last year, a private research firm compiled a dossier making unproven allegations about Trump, including that there was close coordination between his inner circle and Russians who hacked into Democratic email accounts.
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Likewise, there were millions who, in the waning days of the campaign, clicked happily on a salacious dossier of anti-Trump material gathered by gumshoes in an effort to stop him.
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Likewise, there were millions who, in the waning days of the campaign, clicked happily on a salacious dossier of anti-Trump material gathered by gumshoes in an effort to stop him.
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In a pre-inauguration press conference Jan. 11, Trump reacted angrily to the leak of a dossier containing unverified, salacious information about his behavior during a visit to Moscow.
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Cohen, who worked as a lawyer for the Trump Organization for a decade, made an appearance in the dossier compiled by a former British spy.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'dossier.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Did You Know?
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 late 19th century. It comes from "dos," the French word for "back," which is in turn derived from "dorsum," Latin for back. Our word dorsal ("situated on the back"), as in the dorsal fin of a whale, comes from the same Latin source.
Origin and Etymology of dossier
French, bundle of documents labeled on the back, dossier, from dos back, from Latin dorsum —see 2dorsal
DOSSIER Defined for English Language Learners
dossier
playDefinition of dossier for English Language Learners
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: a group of papers that contain detailed information about someone or something
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See words that rhyme with dossier Spanish Central: Translation of dossier Nglish: Translation of dossier for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of dossier for Arabic speakers
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