Muscle · Neck

Palatopharyngeus

Musculus palatopharyngeus

A longitudinal muscle of the throat that begins in the soft palate, descends behind the tonsil and blends into the side wall of the pharynx and the back edge of the thyroid cartilage. It raises a visible ridge of mucosa on its way down — the fold behind the tonsil that anyone can see at the back of their own mouth, and the reason the tonsil sits in a recess between two pillars rather than on a flat wall. Where the constrictors squeeze the pharynx narrower, this one shortens it: it pulls the pharynx and larynx upwards to meet a descending bolus, and draws the two folds towards each other behind the mouth.