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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
Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 6 May 2026
Cooks, bodyguards and photographers who work with the president are also banned from traveling on public transport, the dossier says.
—Nick Paton Walsh, CNN Money, 4 May 2026
Somewhere in these stacks is a working dossier of Étienne Charavay, the handwriting expert whose analysis gave technical credibility to the prosecution in the Dreyfus Affair.
—Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 1 May 2026
The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief, damages, and a court order requiring the groups to remove the dossiers of all Illinois residents from their websites.
—Mikayla Price, CBS News, 13 Apr. 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Dossier.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dossier. Accessed 20 May. 2026.
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dossier
noun
