The iliac furrow, also known as an athlete's girdle, Apollo's Belt or an Adonis belt, is a term for a part of the human anatomy. It refers to either one of two shallow grooves of the surface anatomy of the human abdomen running from the iliac crest (hip bone) to the pubis. It is not a currently defined term in Terminologia Anatomica, though it has been used as a formal anatomical term in the past.
The term "iliac furrow" does not appear in any of the abstracts indexed by PubMed. In modern usage, it is more common to discuss the surface anatomy in terms of nearby structures such as the inguinal ligament or iliac crest.
The term "iliac furrow" still often encountered when reading about art history, and the term "Apollo's belt" is often used by bodybuilders and their admirers. The expression "adonis belt" is also encountered, though less common, from the sense of adonis as any handsome young man (cf. the myth of Adonis).
An indentation on a male's waist caused by wearing a too-tight belt is often referred to as an Apollo's belt, although most men develop this indentation from constant waistband and belt pressure.
Famous quotes containing the words apollo and/or belt:
“In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,—here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)