ventilator
Americannoun
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ventilators
plural
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a person or thing that ventilates.
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a contrivance or opening for replacing foul or stagnant air with fresh air.
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Medicine/Medical. an apparatus to produce artificial respiration, moving air into and out of a patient’s lungs.
The patient presented with signs of respiratory failure and was placed immediately on a ventilator.
noun
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an opening or device, such as a fan, used to ventilate a room, building, etc
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med a machine that maintains a flow of air into and out of the lungs of a patient who is unable to breathe normally
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of ventilator
First recorded in 1735–45; ventilat(e) + -or 2
Compare meaning
How does ventilator compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A ventilator is a machine that brings in good air that's safe to breathe and keeps bad air out. A kitchen ventilator uses fans and filters to direct greasy stove exhaust outside. There are architectural ventilators, for keeping the air inside buildings clean, and also medical ventilators, which work to keep breathable air moving in and out of a patient's lungs. This kind of ventilator is only used when someone is unable to breathe effectively on their own. In both cases, ventilators are all about air. The word comes from the Latin root ventulus, "a breeze."
Vocabulary lists containing ventilator
Novel Study: Fahrenheit 451, Part I
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Ventus and Venire
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Novel Study: A Night to Remember, Chapter 6–Passenger List
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
She was taken to the hospital, where she was intubated and placed on a ventilator.
From Slate ● Oct. 7, 2026
She survived the injections, however, and was rushed to hospital, where she had been unconscious and on a ventilator in critical condition.
From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026
Ferrell said: "She's still in the hospital, on a ventilator, critically ill, we really don't know the prognosis yet, and may not know for several days."
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
As of Thursday evening, Pike was unconscious and on a ventilator, her lawyers said in a court filing Friday.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026
He was shivering and he wanted above all to shove the books up through the ventilator again, but he knew he could not face Beatty again.
From "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
It's a mammoth task: The vast majority of the city's 20,500 licensed food carts -- selling pretzels, peanuts and ice cream -- rely on generators to power stoves, freezers and ventilators.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
Does she wonder how the people hospitalized on ventilators or who lost loved ones feel?
From Salon ● May 11, 2026
GM and Ford teamed up with medical-device makers to churn out tens of thousands of ventilators during the early days of the pandemic.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
Although the fungus can exist on the skin without causing symptoms, patients who depend on ventilators face a much greater risk.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 23, 2025
It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too.
From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
