suture

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sūtūre,^[2] borrowed from Latin sūtūra (“a seam, a sewing together”),^[3][4][2][5] a noun of action from sūtus (“sewn”), the past participle of suō (“to sew”), with the suffix -ūra.^[6][7][8] The OED, the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English allow French suture as an alternative immediate source,^[6][9][10] Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives both, the French as Middle French,^[8] and Skeat, Weekley and Klein give the word as from French.^[11][12][13] The Latin verb is from Proto-Indo-European *syū- (“to bind, sew”),^[3][5] the base that also gave sew,^[14][3] seam and hymen,^[14] and Klein lists Gothic 𐍃𐌹𐌿𐌾𐌰𐌽 (siujan, “to sew”) and Old English sēowan (“to sew”) among its cognates.^[13] The verb is from the noun.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A surgical stitch, or the act of stitching a wound: before 1425, in a Middle English translation of Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie, which says "Þer is 3 maner suturez".^[2][4][3] The OED, in an entry not fully revised since 1918, has its first example only about 1541, in Copland's translation of Galen,^[6] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1535–45.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The word kept the Latin idea of a seam but narrowed it first to surgery, the joining of the lips of a wound by stitches.^[6][2] From that literal seam it was extended to seam-like lines in the body: the Middle English Dictionary also has "a bodily seam, a raphe",^[2] a sense the Shorter Oxford follows to the early 18th century.^[9] The immovable junction of two bones, especially in the skull, is recorded from 1578, in Banister's Historie of Man,^[6][3] and Johnson (1755) gives both this and the surgical sense.^[15] Sewing or a seam in general appears from 1600, in Holland's translation of Livy, chiefly in figurative use, as for the joining of the sections of a literary work.^[6][9][3] In 1677, in Plot's Natural History of Oxford-shire, it was applied to zoology and botany, for lines of junction such as the closure of a shell's valves.^[6] The thread or wire itself came to be called a suture too.^[9][8] Plate tectonics gave it a new use in 1971, for the line where two lithospheric plates have collided.^[6] The verb is dated to 1777 by Barnhart, Etymonline and Merriam-Webster Unabridged,^[4][3][8] but only to 1886 by the unrevised OED.^[6]

Timeline

• before 1425 – a surgical stitch; the act of suturing; a bodily seam.^[2][4]
• 1578 – the junction of two bones, especially in the skull.^[6]
• 1600 – sewing or a seam in general; figuratively, a union of parts.^[6][3]
• 1677 – in zoology and botany, a line of junction.^[6]
• 1777 – verb, to unite by a suture.^[4][3][8] The OED has it from 1886.^[6]
• 1971 – in geology, the junction of two lithospheric plates.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (surgery) A strand of catgut, silk, wire or the like used to close a wound or join tissues.^[8][16][5]
2. (surgery) A stitch or row of stitches made with such a strand.^[17][8][6]
3. (surgery) The act of joining the edges of a wound or incision by stitching.^[6][8][17]
4. (anatomy) An immovable joint between two bones, especially of the skull, or the line of that joint.^[6][16][5]
5. (zoology, botany) A line of junction between adjoining parts, as between the chambers of a mollusc shell or along a seed pod.^[6][16][9]
6. (geology) The junction formed where two lithospheric plates have collided.^[6][9]
7. A seam or joining, as in sewing.^[16][6][5]

Verb

1. To stitch up a wound or incision, or to fasten with sutures: The vet sutured the dog's torn ear.^[8][16][6]
2. (geology) To join lithospheric plates by a suture.^[6][9]

Word family

• sutural
• suturally
• unsutured
• coronal suture
• purse-string suture

Related words

• sew
• seam
• hymen
• sutra

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
14. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press