flexurales

Flexurales is a term that appears in some scholarly contexts to denote entities or phenomena characterized by bending or flexure. The word derives from flexura, Latin for bend, with the Latin plural -es forming "flexurales" as a plural or generic category in several Romance-language sources. Because it is not a standardized technical term, its exact meaning varies by discipline and author.

In geology and geophysics, flexurales may refer to zones of crustal bending under load, or to features produced by flexural stresses, such as foreland bends or flexural slip structures. In this sense, flexurales describe the observational pattern of curvature in lithospheric sections rather than a single named structure.

In anatomy and embryology, flexurales can describe natural bends and flexures in organs or developing embryos (for example, cephalic flexure), used descriptively rather than as formal nomenclature.

In linguistics, some discussions use flexurales as a shorthand for inflectional phenomena, referring to flexural morphemes and the set of inflectional changes that mark grammatical categories.

In engineering and architecture, the term is occasionally employed to characterize components or assemblies designed to bend or accommodate bending under load, such as flexural hinges or flexural elements in beams and plates.

See also: flexion, bending moment, inflection, flexural strength.