Lymph

How to spell lymph

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lymph

What does lymph mean?

1. nounThe clear, colourless fluid that circulates through the body's tissues and lymphatic vessels, carrying white blood cells.

Lymph in a sentence

• The nurse explained how lymph drains excess fluid from the tissues.

• Swollen glands can slow the flow of lymph through the body.

Where does lymph come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin lympha, meaning 'clear water' or 'spring water', a term the Romans also used for the water nymphs believed to inhabit springs and streams. That Latin word was itself coloured by the Greek nymphe, 'nymph' or 'bride', and the spelling drifted toward a 'y' under the influence of Greek-looking words, which is exactly why we write 'lymph' rather than 'limph'. English adopted it in the early 1600s as anatomists began naming the body's fluids; the pale, watery fluid that drains through the tissues earned the name precisely because it looked like clear water. From the same root we get 'limpid', meaning clear and transparent, which is a useful reminder that the watery sense sits at the heart of the word. The unexpected 'y' and the closing '-mph' cluster are the only real traps in an otherwise short word.

How the word is built

• lymph (from Latin lympha: clear water, spring water)