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''vestige'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''vestige'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260919121947-00-⌔

vestige - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

vestige (plural vestiges)

  • A mark left on the earth by a foot.
    • ✤ Synonyms: trace, sign, track, footstep, footprint
  • (by extension) A faint mark or visible sign left by something which is lost, or has perished, or is no longer present.
    • ✤ Synonym: remains
    • ✤ the vestiges of ancient magnificence in Palmyra
    • ✤ * vestiges of former population*
    • ✤ The result, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,— no prospect of an end.1
    • ✤ Her face was without a vestige of colour, but it only showed more strongly the perfect outline of her features. Pale she was, but not like a statue; it was a human paleness—passionate and painful.2
    • ✤ Nevertheless in some cases, my original view, that the points are vestiges of the tips of formerly erect and pointed ears, still seems to me probable.3
    • ✤ Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework.4
    • ✤ The chief remains of the Roman Calagurris are the vestiges of an aqueduct and an amphitheatre.5
    • ✤ The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.6
  • (biology) A vestigial organ; a non-functional organ or body part that was once functional in an evolutionary ancestor.
    • ✤ Any person seeing such a condition could not help being frightened at the conditions found, and it seems to me that that fact should lead us to think that the appendix is a vestige or becoming so.7
    • ✤ Now this paired organ of Jacobsen began in reptiles and is well developed in many mammals. But in man it is a vestige, often disappearing altogether; and the two openings are closed.8
    • ✤ This idea was confirmed by Scott, who performed a detailed comparative analysis of primate anatomy and demonstrated conclusively that the appendix is derived for some unidentified function and is not a vestige.9
  • (television, radio) The remaining portion of a partially suppressed sideband.
    • ✤ [J]ust a trace, or vestige, of the other sideband is included. In the receiver detection circuitry the vestige of the lower sideband is added to the upper sideband.10

Etymology

From French vestige, from Latin vestīgium (“footstep, footprint, track, the sole of the foot, a trace, mark”). Doublet of vestigium.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈvɛs.tɪd͡ʒ/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Hyphenation: ves‧tige

Printed 2026-09-19.

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Footnotes

  1. 1788, James Hutton, Theory of the earth, page 166: ↩

  2. 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Letters Restored”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 218: ↩

  3. 1871, Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter I: ↩

  4. 1895, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, Chapter VIII: ↩

  5. 1911, “Angkor”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: ↩

  6. 1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick: ↩

  7. 1904, Transactions of the […] annual session, volume 40, Homeopathic Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, page 160: ↩

  8. 1932, John Arthur Thomson, Riddles of science, Ayer Publishing, page 824: ↩

  9. 2007, R. Randal Bollingera, Andrew S. Barbasa, Errol L. Busha, Shu S. Lina, William Parkera, “Biofilms in the large bowel suggest an apparent function of the human vermiform appendix,”, in Journal of Theoretical Biology: ↩

  10. 2003, Tarmo Anttalainen, Introduction to Telecommunications Network Engineering, page 133: ↩

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