windpipe

[wind-pahyp]

See more synonyms for windpipe on Thesaurus.com

noun

the trachea of an air-breathing vertebrate.

Origin of windpipe

First recorded in 1520–30; wind¹ + pipe¹

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Related Words for windpipe

esophagus, larynx, gullet, maw, passage, gorge, pharynx, trachea, windpipe, thorax, fauces

Examples from the Web for windpipe

Contemporary Examples of windpipe

After using her hands to clear her windpipe, she freed her eyes from the embers that were blinding her vision.
Hallucinating Away a Heroin Addiction
Abby Haglage
May 4, 2014
He was going to start a tracheotomy, which is opening the throat and inserting a tube into the windpipe.
Jimmy Breslin on JFK’s Assassination: Two Classic Columns
Jimmy Breslin
November 22, 2013
Early signs indicate the windpipe is working, Hannah's doctors announced Tuesday, although she is still on a ventilator.
The Power of Stem Cell Research Saves a Little Girl
Ilana Glazer
May 1, 2013
This time when he woke up, he had a hole in his windpipe, could not speak, and could barely write.
Mailer's Final Gift
Lawrence Schiller
February 5, 2009

Historical Examples of windpipe

Then he gurgled in the darkness as if somebody's fingers had clamped his windpipe.
The Cruise of the Dry Dock
T. S. Stribling
When deaf is squeezin' of me windpipe, I shall 'ave a laugh in it!
The Foundations (Fourth Series Plays)
John Galsworthy
Overcoming a nervous contraction of the windpipe, I had managed to exclaim "Captain Falk!"
Falk
Joseph Conrad
The stem of the tree or bush becomes the windpipe (trachea).
A Handbook of Health
Woods Hutchinson
Careful skinning brings you to the neck and windpipe, which also cut off.
Practical Taxidermy
Montagu Browne

British Dictionary definitions for windpipe

windpipe

noun

a nontechnical name for trachea (def. 1) Related adjective: tracheal

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for windpipe

"trachea," 1520s, from wind (n.1) in the "breath" sense + pipe (n.1).

windpipe in Medicine