1. Of or pertaining to the forehead, or to the corresponding part in the lower animals. Frequent in anatomical applications, as frontal artery, bone, sinus, vein, etc. Frontal tonsure: see quot. 1894.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., s.v. Vein, Frontal-vein, the fore-head vein, a third branch of the outward throat vein, whence, mounting by the bottom of the nether jaw, it comes into the lips and nose, and thence ascends by the inside of the eye to the middle of the fore-head.
1741. Monro, Anat. Bones (ed. 3), 87. The frontal Bone serves to contain, defend and sustain the anterior Lobes of the Brain.
1746. Parsons, in Phil. Trans., XLIV. 6. The true Frontal Muscle arises fleshy from the Process of the Os Frontis.
1826. Kirby & Sp., Entomol. (1828), IV. xlv. 258. He conjectures the seat of this sense [smell] to reside in certain frontal organs.
1840. G. V. Ellis, Anat., 2. The frontal artery, a branch … of the ophthalmic.
1879. H. Calderwood, Mind & Br., ii. 16. The front of the brain, as far back as the fissure of Rolando, is known as the Frontal Lobe.
1894. J. T. Fowler, Adamnan, Introduction, p. xli. The tonsure was made by shaving off all the hair in front of a line drawn from ear to ear, and is called the frontal, ‘St. John’s,’ or Celtic tonsure.
2. Of or pertaining to the forepart or foremost edge. Frontal hammer: see quot. 1881.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. xxvii. 217. We crept up it, and from the summit descended by a glissade to the frontal portion of the cavern.
1863. Lyell, Antiq. Man, xv. 300. The frontal or terminal moraine of the eastern prolongation of the old glacier.
1881. Raymond, Mining Gloss., Frontal hammer or Frontal helve. A forge-hammer lifted by a cam, acting upon a ‘tongue’ immediately in front of the hammer-head.
b. Of an attack, etc.: Directed against or delivered upon the front.
1884. Milit. Engin., I. II. 63. A magazine exposed to frontal fire only.
1886. N. L. Walford, Parl. Gen. Civ. War, 43. With the aid of a frontal attack by the infantry.
3. quasi-sb. = frontal bone.
1854. Owen, Skel. & Teeth, in Circ. Sc., I. 193. The frontals … rest by descending lateral plates, representing connate orbitosphenoids.
1857. Bullock, Cazeaux’ Midwif., 218. The frontal, forming the forehead, as well as the superior-anterior part of the face.
1858. Lytton, What Will He Do with It? II. iv. This was, indeed, a horse of great power … and such a head! the ear, the frontal, the nostril?
