Diaphragm

How to spell diaphragm

9 letters · 3 syllables

The most common mistake is diaphram. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

diaphram diaphragm

What people typed instead

• diaphram3 people

How to pronounce diaphragm

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diaphragm mean?

1. nounThe dome-shaped sheet of muscle separating the chest from the abdomen that drives breathing.
2. nounAn adjustable disc or partition in a camera or instrument that controls how much light passes through the aperture.

Diaphragm in a sentence

• The singing teacher told her to breathe from the diaphragm rather than the chest.

• Narrowing the diaphragm on the lens gave the photograph a much sharper depth of field.

• A sudden spasm of the diaphragm is what causes hiccups.

• The microscope has a small diaphragm beneath the stage to limit the amount of light.

Where does diaphragm come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek diaphragma, which meant a partition or barrier and was built from the prefix dia-, meaning 'across' or 'through', and the verb phrassein, meaning 'to fence in' or 'to wall off'. To the Greeks the diaphragma was literally the wall that divides the chest cavity from the abdomen, and ancient writers also linked the region to the seat of thought and emotion. The term passed into Latin as diaphragma and entered English in the late medieval period through medical and scientific writing. The tricky spelling is a faithful relic of its Greek roots: the 'ph' carries the f sound and the final 'g' before the 'm' is now silent, just as in 'paradigm' and 'phlegm', because the Greek gamma was once pronounced. Over time the meaning broadened from anatomy to any flexible dividing membrane, including the part in a camera that controls the aperture.

How the word is built

• dia- (across, through)
• -phragm (from Greek phragma: fence, partition)