Muscle · Neck

Stylohyoid

Musculus stylohyoideus

A slender muscle running down and forward from the styloid process — the thin spike of bone behind the ear — to the hyoid bone in the front of the neck. Near its end it splits into two slips that pass either side of the intermediate tendon of the digastric, so the two muscles are threaded through one another rather than lying side by side. Its pull carries the hyoid upwards and backwards, lengthening the floor of the mouth as a swallow begins. It is supplied by the facial nerve, which places it in the second pharyngeal arch and separates it from its neighbours above and below the hyoid, each of which answers to a different nerve.