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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
Mikayla Price, CBS News, 13 Apr. 2026
Another pressing dossier on Magyar’s desk will the EU’s drive to step up sanctions on Russia, with Orbán blocking a recent package targeting the country’s energy revenues and shadow fleet.
—Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 12 Apr. 2026
Yet the opposition dossiers from Musk intermediaries spin it as a line of attack.
—Ronan Farrow, New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2026
Trump allies have long argued the document was shaped by flawed or politically motivated intelligence, particularly surrounding the inclusion of material tied to the Steele dossier.
—Kaelan Deese, The Washington Examiner, 1 Apr. 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Dossier.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dossier. Accessed 24 Apr. 2026.
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dossier
noun
