dorsi

Dorsi is primarily encountered as a plural form in Italian, where it is the plural of the noun dorso, meaning back or rear surface. In Italian, dorso can refer to the back of a person, the back side of an animal, or the reverse side of an object such as a page or a shell; accordingly, dorsi denotes multiple backs.

In English-language scientific and medical writing, the familiar terms for the back are dorsal and dorsum. The English vocabulary uses dorsal to describe the posterior or back-facing side of an organism or structure, and dorsum as a noun referring to that back surface. The plural form dorsi does not constitute standard English terminology in anatomy, where more common Latin-derived plurals such as dorsa or dorsae may appear in specialized contexts, but dorsi is generally not used in mainstream English anatomy.

Etymologically, dorso comes from Latin dorsum, meaning “back.” The Italian plural dorsi follows ordinary Italian noun pluralization patterns. The distinction between dorsi and its English equivalents highlights how anatomical terminology draws on multiple languages to describe body surfaces and orientations. In practice, discussions of back-related anatomy rely on the terms dorsal (+ noun) or dorsum, with dorsi appearing mainly in language-specific or cross-linguistic references rather than as a standard English term.

See also: dorsum, dorsal, ventral, anatomy, Latin-based medical terminology.