Artery

How to spell artery

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce artery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does artery mean?

1. nounA muscular blood vessel that carries blood away from the heart to the rest of the body.
2. nounA major road, railway, or channel that carries the main flow of traffic or goods.

Artery in a sentence

• The surgeon repaired the damaged artery during the operation.

• The motorway is the main artery linking the two cities.

• A blocked artery can reduce blood flow to the heart.

• A single accident on that artery can jam the whole region for hours.

Where does artery come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek artēria, which to the ancient Greeks meant the windpipe or any air passage in the body. The reason is striking: early anatomists noticed that these vessels were usually found empty after death, since the blood drains into the veins, so they concluded the tubes must carry air rather than blood. The term passed into Latin as arteria and reached English in the late 1300s through medical and scholarly writing. By the time the true circulation of the blood was understood in the seventeenth century, the name had stuck even though the air theory was long gone. The same root survives in 'arteriosclerosis', the hardening of these vessels, and the figurative use for a major traffic route grew naturally from the idea of a channel carrying vital flow.

How the word is built

• arter- (from Greek artēria: a vessel or windpipe)
• -y (noun ending)