Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or located on the right side; right.
  • adjective Right-handed.
  • adjective Zoology Of or relating to a gastropod shell that coils clockwise and has its aperture to the right when facing the observer with the apex upward.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Right, as opposed to left; right-hand.
  • In conchology, dextrorse: applied to univalve shells whose aperture is on the right side when the shell is held in front of the observer with the apex upward and the aperture downward toward him: opposed to sinistral. Most shells are dextral.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Right, as opposed to sinistral, or left.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) a spiral shell the whorls of which turn from left right, or like the hands of a watch when the apex of the spire is toward the eye of the observer.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the right side

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or on the right
  • adjective preferring to use right foot or hand or eye

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Check that picture: Ms Saites has an extraordinarily well-developed dextral sternocleido mastoideus.

    "When you walk into my house, you've just walked into a squirrel cage." Ann Althouse 2009

  • Could it still mate with a dextral individual of its own species?

    How snails mate: Oxyloma retusa AYDIN 2008

  • Could it still mate with a dextral individual of its own species?

    Archive 2008-03-01 AYDIN 2008

  • Therefore, an aberrant individual with a tall sinistral shell among tall-shelled dextral conspecifics is more likely to be able to mate and leave offspring than one with a wide sinistral shell among wide-shelled dextral conspecifics.

    How snails mate: Oxyloma retusa AYDIN 2008

  • The twisting of the head is apparently necessary, because these are both dextral individuals and so, their genital openings are on the right sides of their heads.

    Archive 2008-03-01 AYDIN 2008

  • Such circles always rotate in a clockwise direction, because the genital openings of dextral slugs are on the right sides of their heads.

    Limax maximus AYDIN 2008

  • The twisting of the head is apparently necessary, because these are both dextral individuals and so, their genital openings are on the right sides of their heads.

    How snails mate: Oxyloma retusa AYDIN 2008

  • Such circles always rotate in a clockwise direction, because the genital openings of dextral slugs are on the right sides of their heads.

    Archive 2008-02-01 AYDIN 2008

  • Therefore, an aberrant individual with a tall sinistral shell among tall-shelled dextral conspecifics is more likely to be able to mate and leave offspring than one with a wide sinistral shell among wide-shelled dextral conspecifics.

    Archive 2008-03-01 AYDIN 2008

  • According to the phylogeny of these snakes cited in the paper, the ancestral snakes had symmetric dentition, which suggests that the unequal teeth numbers on the snake's jaws is an adaptation to preying on dextral snails.

    Evolution of jaw asymmetry in snail-eating snakes AYDIN 2007

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