Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Either of two spongy, saclike respiratory organs in air-breathing vertebrates, occupying the chest cavity together with the heart and functioning to provide oxygen to the blood while removing carbon dioxide.
  • noun A similar organ in some invertebrates, including spiders and terrestrial snails.
  • idiom (at the top of (one's) lungs) As loudly as one's voice will allow.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One of the two spongy or saccular organs, occupying the thorax or upper part of the body-cavity, which communicate with the pharynx through the trachea, and are the organs of respiration in air-breathing vertebrates.
  • noun In entomology, one of the respiratory organs peculiar to those Arachnida whose tracheal system is modified into a number of lamellæ superimposed upon one another like the leaves of a book. They are also called pulmonary lamellæ and respiratory leaflets.
  • noun In pulmonate mollusks, a modification of the integument subserving aërial respiration: more fully called external lung. Huxley.
  • noun plural A bellows-blower; a chemist's servant.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) An organ for aërial respiration; -- commonly in the plural.
  • noun (Med.) pneumonia.
  • noun (Bot.) a species of gentian (Gentian Pneumonanthe).
  • noun (Bot.) tree lungwort. See under Lungwort.
  • noun (Zoöl.) one of the breathing organs of spiders and snails.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun anatomy A biological organ that extracts oxygen from the air.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun either of two saclike respiratory organs in the chest of vertebrates; serves to remove carbon dioxide and provide oxygen to the blood

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English lunge, from Old English lungen, lungs; see legwh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old English lungen, from Proto-Germanic *lungw- (“the light organ”), from Proto-Indo-European *lengʷʰ- (“not heavy, agile, nimble”). Cognate with West Frisian long, Dutch long, German Lunge, Danish lunge, Swedish lunga and also Russian лёгкое (lёgkoe) (lung), Ancient Greek ἐλαφρός (elaphros) and perhaps Albanian lungë ("blister,bulge"). Compare Latin levis and Old English lēoht (Modern English light).

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word lung.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.