fossorial
adjective, noun
fossorial is an adjective meaning “Of, pertaining to, or adapted for digging or burrowing” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-S-S-O-R-I-A-L, and it appears about once in every 55 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does fossorial mean?
adjective
- 1
Of, pertaining to, or adapted for digging or burrowing.
noun
- 1
Any digging animal (such as a mole)
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of fossorial
- more fossorial comparative
- most fossorial superlative
- fossorials plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is fossorial?
Fossorial appears about once in every 55 million words in written English, the 231,291st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Fossorial in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense of, pertaining to, or adapted for digging or burrowing:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does fossorial come from?
From Latin fossōrius (“adapted for digging or delving”), from fodiō (“dig”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).