Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Bronchus
/ˈbrɒŋkəs/noun
Either of the two main airways branching from the trachea into the lungs.
The Greek roots
βρόγχος
brónchos
windpipe, throat
Literally: “windpipe”
Follow a root:βρόγχος3 words
The story of the word
βρόγχος was the windpipe in Greek medical writing, and anatomy later reserved the word for the two tubes that branch off it. What the tube was for provoked real argument: some ancient writers held that drink went down it into the lung, and Aristotle takes the trouble to refute them in Parts of Animals. The English plural is still the Latin bronchi, which is why bronchitis and bronchoscope keep the hard ch.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
bronchitisbronchiolebronchoscopy
In a sentence
The scan showed narrowing in the left main bronchus.
A foreign body almost always lodges in the right bronchus, which runs straighter.