Looking for an obscure word

September 4, 2009 11:23 AM

What is the name for the little notch at the bottom of one's neck between the clavicles? That is, the area directly under the 12 in this picture?
posted by ubiquity to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

suprasternal notch?
posted by katillathehun at 11:26 AM on September 4, 2009

it is the suprasternal or jugular notch, I believe
posted by brainmouse at 11:26 AM on September 4, 2009

Best answer: Are you looking for the technical term or slang words? My friends call it "the Reservoir", for dirty reasons.
posted by muddgirl at 11:27 AM on September 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

Suprasternal notch.
posted by -harlequin- at 11:27 AM on September 4, 2009

Response by poster: Ok, it's the suprasternal notch. But I believe there is another word for it, something less clinical, that I once saw on a list of obscure words, similar to philtrum.
posted by ubiquity at 11:31 AM on September 4, 2009

Are you thinking of the manubrium, by any chance?
posted by grouse at 11:34 AM on September 4, 2009

Response by poster: No, that's the bone underneath it, at the top of the strernum. I'm looking for a word that describes the visible surface.
posted by ubiquity at 11:40 AM on September 4, 2009

As popularized by The English Patient.
posted by proj at 11:44 AM on September 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Hollow?
posted by 8dot3 at 2:57 PM on September 4, 2009

Best answer: I don't know whether that helps, but you were looking for an "obscure" word - in German it's called Salzfässchen, which (literally) means saltcellar. I don't know whether that figurative usage also exists in English, though.

(On preview: ok, it's not similar to philtrum, but I still like it...)
posted by The Toad at 3:08 PM on September 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I know the word you mean but I can't think of it. It sounds similar to isthmus.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:24 PM on September 4, 2009

You might be thinking of the little notch to the north, under the nose. It's called the philtrum.
posted by Acacia at 5:30 PM on September 4, 2009

Best answer: Vascular sizood. It's the word used in Ondaatje's book, The English Patient. They corrected it for the movie.
posted by suedehead at 10:17 PM on September 5, 2009

Response by poster: Another incorrect term for it is ucipital mapillary (made up by Samuel Raphaelson for Cary Grant to say in Hitchcock's Suspicion), but that's not what I was thinking of either. Notwithstanding DarlingBri's tantalizing case of presque vu, I have come to the conclusion that I'm wrong. I probably heard someone misidentify the suprasternal notch as the philtrum, and not knowing better at the time, went away thinking there was a word for it, a word which i now know is not philtrum. Anyway, thanks to all for trying, I still learned a lot.
posted by ubiquity at 8:26 AM on September 6, 2009