lung
NounOpen English WordNet
Noun (1)lungs
- either of two saclike respiratory organs in the chest of vertebrates; serves to remove carbon dioxide and provide oxygen to the bloodType of respiratory organPart of lower respiratory tractParts bronchial artery, pulmonary vein, alveolus, alveolar bed, lobe of the lung
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
Origin: OE. lunge, AS. lunge, pl. lungen; akin to D. long, G. lunge, Icel. & Sw. lunga, Dan. lunge, all prob. from the root of E. light. √125. See Light not heavy.
Anatomy An organ for aërial respiration; — commonly in the plural.
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer.— William Shakespeare
☞ In all air-breathing vertebrates the lungs are developed from the ventral wall of the esophagus as a pouch which divides into two sacs. In amphibians and many reptiles the lungs retain very nearly this primitive saclike character, but in the higher forms the connection with the esophagus becomes elongated into the windpipe and the inner walls of the sacs become more and more divided, until, in the mammals, the air spaces become minutely divided into tubes ending in small air cells, in the walls of which the blood circulates in a fine network of capillaries. In mammals the lungs are more or less divided into lobes, and each lung occupies a separate cavity in the thorax. See Respiration.
Lung fever Medicine, pneumonia. — Lung flower Botany, a species of gentian (Gentian Pneumonanthe). — Lung lichen Botany, tree lungwort. See under Lungwort. — Lung sac Zoology, one of the breathing organs of spiders and snails.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54