Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Pleura
/ˈplʊərə/noun
The double membrane that lines the chest cavity and wraps each lung.
The Greek roots
πλευρά
pleurá
rib, side of the body
Literally: “the side”
Follow a root:πλευρά2 words
The story of the word
πλευρά is a rib, and in the plural the flank, the part of a man a spear goes into in Homer. Anatomy narrowed it to the membrane on the inside of that flank, which is why pleurisy is inflammation of a lining rather than of a bone. The older, wider sense survives in entomology: a pleuron is still the side plate of an insect's body segment.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
pleurisypleuralpleuron
In a sentence
Fluid had collected between the two layers of pleura.
Pleurisy hurts most at the top of a breath, which is how patients describe it first.