Duct

How to spell duct

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce duct

What does duct mean?

1. nounA tube, pipe, or channel that carries air, liquid, cables, or bodily fluid from one place to another.

Duct in a sentence

• The heating engineer cleaned every air duct in the building.

• A blocked tear duct can make the eye water constantly.

Where does duct come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin ductus, which means 'a leading' or 'a drawing along', and is the past participle of the verb ducere, 'to lead' or 'to draw'. The original idea was of something that guides or channels a flow from one place to another, exactly the job a modern duct still does for air, water, or cables. English took the word in directly from Latin in the early 1600s, at first in anatomical writing for the small tubes that carry fluids around the body, such as the tear duct. The same ducere root runs through a large family of familiar words, including 'conduct' (to lead together), 'aqueduct' (a leading of water), 'introduce', and 'produce', which is a useful clue that the spelling ends in the hard '-ct' rather than the sound-alike '-ck' of 'duck'.

How the word is built

• duc- (from Latin ducere: to lead, to draw)
• -t (from the past participle ductus)