Pulmonary

How to spell pulmonary

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce pulmonary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pulmonary mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the lungs or to the system of blood vessels that serves them.

Pulmonary in a sentence

• The patient was referred to a specialist for a pulmonary function test.

• Smoking greatly raises the risk of chronic pulmonary disease.

Where does pulmonary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin pulmonarius, meaning 'of the lungs', which was built on the noun pulmo (stem pulmon-), the ordinary Latin word for a lung. The Latin pulmo is related to the Greek pleumon, also meaning lung, and both ultimately trace back to an old root tied to floating, since lungs were noticed to float in water when the rest of an animal sank. English adopted pulmonary in the seventeenth century as anatomy and medicine grew more formal, and it has stayed strictly technical ever since. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed schwa of the second syllable is easy to misjudge, so writers must remember it is pulmon-, matching the Latin stem, before the -ary ending. Knowing the root pulmo keeps the o in place and the spelling steady.

How the word is built

• pulmon- (from Latin pulmo, lung)
• -ary (relating to)