Transfusion

How to spell transfusion

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce transfusion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transfusion mean?

1. nounThe transfer of donated blood or blood products into a patient's circulation.

Transfusion in a sentence

• The surgeon ordered an emergency blood transfusion during the operation.

• After losing so much blood, she needed a transfusion to recover.

Where does transfusion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin transfusio, a noun built on the verb transfundere, which combined trans, meaning 'across' or 'over', with fundere, meaning 'to pour'. The literal idea was the pouring of a liquid from one container across into another. Latin authors used it for transferring or decanting fluids long before any medical sense existed. English took the word in around the 1500s, at first for the general act of pouring something from one vessel into another, and then, as physicians began experimenting with moving blood between bodies in the 1600s, it settled firmly into its modern medical meaning. The same fundere root also gives English 'infuse', 'confuse', and 'refund', and remembering that buried 'fus' (pour) is the cleanest way to keep the spelling steady.

How the word is built

• trans- (across)
• fus (pour, from Latin fundere)
• -ion (noun of action)