Swallowing during airplane takeoffs and landings allows air to move through the Eustachian tube to equalize pressure across the eardrum, causing the ears to “pop.”
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On the other side of the tympanum is the Eustachian tube.
From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015
The middle ear contains the ossicles and is connected to the pharynx by the Eustachian tube.
From Textbooks • Jun. 19, 2013
Following one of these infections, the Eustachian tube becomes inflamed and blocked.
From The Guardian • Sep. 7, 2010
Damage to the Eustachian tube and repeated infections left him almost deaf on the right side, where he had been accustomed to placing patients, so that his chair and analytic couch had to be transposed.
From Time Magazine Archive
Incidentally, another piece of tubing in the body, the Eustachian tube linking the middle ear to the pharynx, was also described around this time, by Bartolomeo Eustachio.
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
