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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
John Hudson The Washington Post, arkansasonline.com, 19 Mar. 2025
Fusion then hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier.
—Alexander Mallin, ABC News, 11 Mar. 2025
It was created in the wake of US involvement in the Vietnam War, during which time the FBI had been compiling dossiers on anti-war activists.
—Jeanne Sahadi, CNN, 25 Feb. 2025
As reported by Reuters, a six-page Israeli intelligence dossier passed to governments and media in January 2024 alleged that 190 UNRWA employees had doubled as Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants, accusing 12 people of involvement in the attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
—Thomas G. Moukawsher, Newsweek, 12 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Dossier.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dossier. Accessed 16 Apr. 2025.
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dossier
noun
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