Arteries

How to spell arteries

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce arteries

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does arteries mean?

1. nounThe blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart to the rest of the body.
2. nounMajor roads or routes through which traffic or goods flow.

Arteries in a sentence

• The surgeon explained how fatty deposits can narrow the arteries.

• The motorway is one of the busiest arteries feeding into the city.

• Regular exercise helps keep the arteries healthy and clear.

• Flooding closed several of the region's main transport arteries.

Where does arteries come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the ancient Greek 'arteria', a term that originally referred to the windpipe and to the vessels carrying air around the body. Greek physicians believed these tubes held air rather than blood, partly because arteries empty after death, which is how the word picked up that early association with breath. It passed into Latin as 'arteria' and reached English in the late 1300s through medical and scholarly writing, by which time it had settled on its modern sense of a vessel carrying blood away from the heart. The singular 'artery' simply takes the regular '-y' to '-ies' plural, which is why the spelling shifts in the plural form. The same Greek root also lies behind 'arteriosclerosis', the hardening of these vessels, a useful link for remembering the 'arteri-' spelling.

How the word is built

• arteri- (from Greek arteria: windpipe, later blood vessel)
• -es (plural ending)