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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
Ruth Marcus, New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2025
The controversial dossier contained salacious and unproven allegations highlighting alleged links between Russia, Mr. Trump and his associates.
—Jacob Rosen, CBS News, 12 Mar. 2025
The big picture: The law firm, one of the largest in the nation, represented Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 and hired the firm that compiled the dossier.
—Sareen Habeshian, Axios, 6 Mar. 2025
Presumably, Beck — who has the kind of connections to run Reacher’s fingerprints and get a copy of his Army dossier in mere minutes — could get the plate number of a vehicle in police custody without sending an unreliable henchman to the lot in the middle of the night.
—Chris Klimek, Vulture, 20 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Dossier.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dossier. Accessed 5 Apr. 2025.
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dossier
noun
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