Font

July 1st, 2014 by admin

“Fontanelle” comes directly from French, where it means literally “little fountain.” The most common uses of “fontanelle” are for the depression or hollow between two muscles or the areas of a baby’s skull that remain soft and flexible for the first year or so after birth. (The human skull is actually made up of six separate bones that fuse together over time.) The use of “fontanelle” for these spots (and the space between muscles) comes from the slight depression at such places, similar to a spring in a shallow hollow of the earth.

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Posted in columns, July 2014 | 1 comment

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  1. Stephanie:

    July 10th, 2014 at 8:36 am

    Thanks for all the great work! When I teach about the fontanelles in my Anatomy classes, we use a similar explanation for the word but include the pulsing of the babies blood pressure which is visible in the fontanelle of a newborn, as the main reason for calling it “little fountain.” I imagine the early use of forceps style tools cause quite a few little fountains to pour forth!