Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The armpit.
  • noun A body part analogous to the armpit, such as the hollow under a bird's wing.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In anatomy, the armpit; a region of the body in the recess between the upper arm (or in birds the upper part of the wing) and the side of the chest beneath the shoulder.
  • noun In botany, same as axil, 2.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) The armpit, or the cavity beneath the junction of the arm and shoulder.
  • noun (Bot.) An axil.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The armpit, or the cavity beneath the junction of the arm and shoulder.
  • noun botany, uncommon Alternative form of axil.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the hollow under the arm where it is joined to the shoulder

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin axilla ("side, armpit").

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Examples

  • The axilla is a pyramidal space, situated between the upper lateral part of the chest and the medial side of the arm.

    VI. The Arteries. 4b. The Axilla 1918

  • One or two small branches supplying the anterior fold of the axilla are the only vessels divided, and may not even require ligature, unless, indeed, from necrosis, or to remove a tumour,

    A Manual of the Operations of Surgery For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners Joseph Bell 1874

  • Titled "Measurement of paraben concentrations in human breast tissue at serial locations across the breast from axilla to sternum," the team of researchers, led by Dr. Philippa Darbre from the University of Reading in the UK, found that virtually all -- 99 percent -- of the tissue samples collected from women participating in the study contained at least one paraben, and 60 percent of the samples contained no less than five parabens.

    Organic Authority.com: Breast Cancer Study Finds Parabens in Virtually All Tumors Organic Authority.com 2012

  • The key finding is that for women with apparently limited disease before lumpectomy and what's called a positive sentinel node, taking out all the cancerous nodes from the axilla armpit has no survival advantage after five years.

    Dr. Elaine Schattner: New Study Supports Less Surgery For Breast Cancer Dr. Elaine Schattner 2011

  • Titled "Measurement of paraben concentrations in human breast tissue at serial locations across the breast from axilla to sternum," the team of researchers, led by Dr. Philippa Darbre from the University of Reading in the UK, found that virtually all -- 99 percent -- of the tissue samples collected from women participating in the study contained at least one paraben, and 60 percent of the samples contained no less than five parabens.

    Organic Authority.com: Breast Cancer Study Finds Parabens in Virtually All Tumors Organic Authority.com 2012

  • A doctor writes, The hair, face, axilla, and groin usually harbor the greatest number of bacteria.

    Modern Science in the Bible Ben Hobrink 2011

  • The key finding is that for women with apparently limited disease before lumpectomy and what's called a positive sentinel node, taking out all the cancerous nodes from the axilla armpit has no survival advantage after five years.

    Dr. Elaine Schattner: New Study Supports Less Surgery For Breast Cancer Dr. Elaine Schattner 2011

  • A doctor writes, The hair, face, axilla, and groin usually harbor the greatest number of bacteria.

    Modern Science in the Bible Ben Hobrink 2011

  • A doctor writes, The hair, face, axilla, and groin usually harbor the greatest number of bacteria.

    Modern Science in the Bible Ben Hobrink 2011

  • A doctor writes, The hair, face, axilla, and groin usually harbor the greatest number of bacteria.

    Modern Science in the Bible Ben Hobrink 2011

Comments

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  • What a delightful word for armpit!

    May 15, 2008

  • "In Italy one doctor gave intravenous injections of mercuric chloride. Another rubbed creosote, a disinfectant, into the axilla, where lymph nodes, outposts of white blood cells scattered through the body, lie beneath the skin. A third insisted that enemas of warm milk and one drop of creosote every twelve hours for every year of age prevented pneumonia."

    —John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 354

    February 17, 2009