Forms: 6–8 fontenel(l(e, 6 fontynelle, 7 funtanel, 7–9 fontanel(l(e, fontinel(l(e. [a. Fr. fontanelle (OF. fontanele, fontenele little fountain, also in the senses below), dim. of fontaine FOUNTAIN. Cf. It. fontanella little fountain, also hollow of the neck.]
1. Anat. † a. The hollow between two muscles.
Mentioned as the appropriate place for the application of a seton or a cautery: cf. sense 2.
1541. R. Copland, Guydon’s Quest. Chirurg., IV. W. For that cause be the cetons & canteres [sic] done (behinde the necke,) and in the fontenelles of the lacertes where as one is deuyded from the other. Ibid., Pij. On the homoplate vnder the font[en]elles of the armes thre fyngers fro the ioyntes. Ibid., On the fontynelles vnder ye knee.
b. One of several membranous spaces in the head of an infant which lie at the adjacent angles of the parietal bones. (Syd. Soc. Lex.) In some animals it is permanent.
1741. Monro, Anat. Bones (ed. 3), 71. Paaw tells us he saw that Part of the parietal and frontal Bones, where the Fontanelle is in Children, surrounded with a Suture.
1752. Smellie, Midwif., I. 292. No perceiveable pulsation at the Fontanelle and temporal arteries.
a. 1823. M. Baillie, Wks. (1825), I. 187, note. In two of the children, I opened the head at the anterior fontanel, took out a portion of the brain, and filled the cavity with the antiseptic powder.
1872. Mivart, Elem. Anat. (1883), 127. The transitory fontanelle of man is permanent in some animals, as e.g. certain Sharks, where the cranium is to a large extent roofed by membrane instead of by bone or cartilage.
1875. Huxley, in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), I. 755/1. It furnishes a floor, side walls, and roof to the brain case [of the frog], interrupted only by a large space (fontanelle), covered in by membrane, which lies in the interorbital region under the parieto-frontals; and by the foramina for the exit of the cranial nerves.
† 2. Med. An artificial ulcer or a natural issue for the discharge of humours from the body. Obs.
1612. Woodall, The Surgeons Mate, Wks. (1653), 7. They [cauterizing Irons] are good to make a funtanel or Issue in the hinder part of the head, or in the neck.
1676. Phil. Trans., XI. 20 Nov., 742. Fontinels or Issues naturally arising in the Arms and Feet, and curing a Patient of a violent Head-ache, and troublesom pustules of the Head.
1779. Johnson, Lett. to Dr. Taylor, 3 Aug. He has a fontanel in his back.
b. In extended sense: An outlet for the discharge of secretions, etc. Often with mixture of the etymological sense ‘fount.’ Also transf. and fig.
1649. Jer. Taylor, Gt. Exemp., Disc. i. § 9. Why hath nature given to Women two exuberant fontineles? Ibid. (1650), Holy Living, ii. § 3 (1727), 75. For Widows, the fontinel of whose desires hath been opened by the former permissions of the marriage-bed, they must remember.
1660. Waterhouse, Arms & Arm., 126. To speak before a Prince, gives an Orator (who has a noble and a notable confidence, and whose fontenel sends forth matter with words) such an occasion of ingratiation, as life meets not with in sublunary professions.
1701. C. Wolley, Jrnl. in New York (1860), 25. Nature kindly drains and purgeth it by Fontanels and Issues of running waters in its irriguous Valleys, and shelters it with the umbrella’s of all sorts of Trees from pernicious Lakes.
1848. R. E. Landor, Fountain of Arethusa, III. ii. § 1. Notwithstanding the velocity with which we descended through this narrow fontanel of perforated rock, round and round twenty fathoms deep, I had once some feeble consciousness that light was before me.
