# navel

Pronunciation: say "NAY-vuhl" /ˈneɪvəl/

## Noun

1. The small hollow or knob in the middle of the belly of a placental mammal, marking where the umbilical cord was attached before birth.
   - Simple: The small dent in the middle of your belly, left where the cord joined you to your mother before birth.
   - _The doctor checked for redness around the newborn's navel._
   - _Some people have a navel that pokes outward rather than sitting recessed._
2. The central part or point of anything; the middle around which the rest is arranged.
   - Simple: The center or middle point of something.
   - _The grand cathedral marked the spiritual navel of the medieval town._
   - _Her argument kept circling back to the navel of the dispute: who actually owned the land._
3. A common variety of seedless orange marked by a small navel-like formation at the end opposite the stem.
   - Simple: A sweet, seedless orange with a small bump on one end that looks like a belly button.
   - _A ripe navel makes a perfect afternoon snack._
   - _The grocery stocked crates of navels alongside the grapefruit._
4. An eye on the underside of a carronade for fastening the gun to its carriage.
   - Simple: A metal ring under an old ship's cannon, used to fasten it to its stand.
   - _The gunner secured the carronade by passing a bolt through its navel._
   - _Each navel was cast as part of the gun's lower body._

## Verb

5. Of a structure or feature, to occupy and mark the central point of a landscape. *(literary)*
   - Simple: Of a building or feature, to sit right in the middle of a wide stretch of land.
   - _Ancient standing stones navel the windswept plateau in the poet's vision._
   - _In her verse, a ruined tower navels the silent moor._

## Origin

This word comes from Middle English "navel," from Old English "nafola," from Proto-Germanic *nabalô (compare Dutch "navel" and German "Nabel"). It traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root that also gave Latin "umbilīcus" and Ancient Greek "omphalós," and it is a doublet of "omphalos."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/navel (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).