Anatomy Guide › Thorax
Xiphoid Process
At the very bottom of the breastbone hangs the xiphoid process, a small tongue of cartilage and bone whose name comes from the Greek xiphos, a straight sword — the xiphoid is the sword's tip. It is the smallest of the sternum's three parts and the most variable: it may be pointed, forked, curved forward or backward, or pierced by a hole, and it remains soft cartilage well into adulthood, often not fully hardening until middle age.
Feel down the center of your chest to where the rib margins meet in an inverted V; the small firm nub in that notch is the xiphoid. Several important structures use it as an anchor. Fibers of the diaphragm — the main muscle of breathing — attach to its inner surface, as do the rectus abdominis ('six-pack') muscles and part of the transverse chest wall musculature. Small as it is, it is a genuine crossroads between chest and abdomen.
The xiphoid earns special attention in first-aid courses. During CPR, rescuers are taught to position their hands on the sternal body above the xiphoid, because compressing the xiphoid itself can snap it and drive the fragment into the liver, which lies close beneath. It can also become inflamed (xiphoidalgia), producing a chest-wall pain sometimes mistaken for cardiac trouble.
In Anamo, the xiphoid process is a precise midline target at the border of two regions. If chest guesses run warm but abdominal guesses run warmer, the xiphoid sits exactly on that boundary — a classic 'edge piece' of the thoracic puzzle.
- Named after the Greek word for sword — it is the 'sword tip' of the sternum
- May stay cartilaginous into middle age and varies widely in shape
- Anchors fibers of the diaphragm and the rectus abdominis
- CPR hand position is taught specifically to avoid compressing it
Think you could find the xiphoid process on a 3D model? Play Anamo and test yourself — every guess is color-coded by how close it lands to the mystery structure.