bertillonage
Syllables: ber·til·lon·ageUK/bɛːtijɒˈnɑːʒ/
bertillonage noun: an early form of biometric identification used on criminals by the French police, making use of distinguishing anthropometric measurements, such as head size, arm span and scars.
Noun
bertillonage (uncountable)
- An early form of biometric identification used on criminals by the French police, making use of distinguishing anthropometric measurements, such as head size, arm span and scars.
- A similar form of identification of used on racing greyhounds.
- Often these [clothing] labels are of more use than the so-called bertillonage, those eleven items of physical measurement and characteristics that must be recorded to make a positive identification but that are useless for anything else and find themselves at the bottom of desk drawers or in unused...2005, Péter Nádas, translated by Imre Goldstein, Parallel Stories
Origin of bertillonage
Learned borrowing from French bertillonnage; from the name of the inventor, Alphonse Bertillon.
Questions about bertillonage
- What does bertillonage mean?
- Bertillonage means an early form of biometric identification used on criminals by the French police, making use of distinguishing anthropometric measurements, such as head size, arm span and scars.
- What part of speech is bertillonage?
- Bertillonage is a noun.
- How do you pronounce bertillonage?
- Bertillonage is pronounced /bɛːtijɒˈnɑːʒ/ (UK).
Words near bertillonage in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bertillonage (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “bertillonage.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bertillonage. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.