noun

• 1Anatomy Zoology
  The jaw or a jawbone, especially the lower jawbone in mammals and fishes.

  ‘The tongue is suspended from the inside of the mandible above the hyoid bone and has muscles with a range of different orientations.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘In the mandible, there are four incisors, two canines, four premolars, and six molars.’
  • ‘Most use their maxillae and mandibles to take in food.’
  • ‘The human remains comprise one complete mandible, two fragmentary mandibles, and a cranial fragment.’
  • ‘Both wolves and spotted hyenas tend to leave the skulls and mandibles of their prey behind, but they often remove entire limbs, especially from the upper exposed side of the carcass.’

  Synonyms

  jawbone, lower jaw, mandible

  1. 1.1Either of the upper and lower parts of a bird's beak.
     ‘the drake is all black except for an orange mark on the upper mandible’
     More example sentences

     • ‘The upper mandible of the bill is dark, and the legs are bright orange.’
     • ‘Breeding adults have a laterally flattened horn on the upper mandible.’
     • ‘The bill is a pinkish horn color and dark markings appear on the upper mandible.’
     • ‘In addition, bill curvature was measured, taking the radius of the height of the upper mandible from the line traced from the base to the tip of the bill.’
     • ‘The young birds' mandibles begin to cross about two weeks after they fledge, and they learn to extract seeds soon after that.’
     Synonyms

     bill, nib, mandible
  2. 1.2Either half of the crushing organ in an arthropod's mouthparts.
     ‘They crush the honeybees in their mandibles one after another until the bees are all dead.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Centipedes were measured from the tip of the upper mandible to the posterior end of the last body segment.’
     • ‘The trap-jaw ant fires its mandibles with such force to propel itself to the front of the pack.’