Gland

How to spell gland

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gland

What does gland mean?

1. nounAn organ in the body that produces and releases a substance such as a hormone, sweat, or saliva.

Gland in a sentence

• The doctor checked whether a swollen gland in his neck was a sign of infection.

• The thyroid gland controls how quickly the body uses energy.

Where does gland come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin glans, with the stem form glandis, which literally meant 'acorn'. Early anatomists noticed that certain small, rounded organs in the body resembled the shape of an acorn, so the same word was applied to them. English took the word in through French glande during the late 1600s, when medical and scientific writing was rapidly expanding its vocabulary. The acorn link survives elsewhere too: botanists still use 'glans' for an acorn-like structure, and the related Latin glandula (a 'little acorn') gives us the adjective 'glandular'. Because the word is short and spelled exactly as it sounds, the only thing to remember is the silent simplicity of the ending: g-l-a-n-d, with no extra letters.

How the word is built

• gland (from Latin glans, glandis: acorn), borrowed whole with no prefix or suffix