meatus

English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin meātus (“a going, passing; a way, path, passage”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /miˈeɪ.təs/

  Audio (General American):

  (file)

• (plural) (General American) IPA^(key): /miˈeɪ.təs/, /miˈeɪˌtus/
• Rhymes: -eɪtəs

Noun

meatus (plural meatus or meatuses)

1. (anatomy) A tubular opening or passage leading to the interior of the body.

   Hyponyms: acoustic meatus, urinary meatus

   The urinary meatus is the opening of the urethra, situated on the glans penis in males, and in the vulva in females.

   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 60:

     The illness. It came out of nowhere. His breathing all of a sudden started hurting the back of his throat. Then that overfull heat in various cranial meatus.

   • 2012, David W. Kennedy, Peter H. Hwang, editors, Rhinology: Diseases of the Nose, Sinuses, and Skull Base‎^[1], Thieme, →ISBN:

     The vibrissae are coarse hairs whose follicles are located just within the nasal meatus.

2. (anatomy) Ellipsis of acoustic meatus, the passage leading into the ear.

   Synonym: ear canal

Derived terms

• auditory meatus
• meatal
• meatic
• meato-
• permeate
• pseudomeatus
• urethral meatus

Translations

tubular opening

• Afrikaans: buis (af)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 道 (zh) (dào), 口 (zh) (kǒu)

• Finnish: aukko (fi), meatus (fi)
• French: méat (fr) m
• German: Gang (de) m
• Italian: meato (it) m
• Polish: ujście przewodu n
• Portuguese: meato m
• Spanish: meato (es) m

See also

• ear canal
• foramen

Further reading

• “meatus”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “meatus”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Anagrams

• Matsue, autems, mutase

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [meˈaː.tʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [meˈaː.tus]

Etymology 1

Perfect passive participle of meō (“to go, to pass”).

Participle

meātus (feminine meāta, neuter meātum); first/second-declension participle

1. perfect passive participle of meō

Declension

First/second-declension adjective.

	singular				plural
	masculine	feminine	neuter		masculine	feminine	neuter
nominative	meātus	meāta	meātum		meātī	meātae	meāta
genitive	meātī	meātae	meātī		meātōrum	meātārum	meātōrum
dative	meātō	meātae	meātō		meātīs
accusative	meātum	meātam	meātum		meātōs	meātās	meāta
ablative	meātō	meātā	meātō		meātīs
vocative	meāte	meāta	meātum		meātī	meātae	meāta

Related terms

• commeātus
• intrameātus
• permeātus
• remeātus

Etymology 2

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *mey-

Proto-Indo-European *-os

Proto-Indo-European *mey-o-

Proto-Italic *mejo-

Latin meō

Proto-Indo-European *-tus

Proto-Italic *-tus

Latin -tus

Latin meātus

From meō (“to go, pass”) + -tus (action noun suffix).

Noun

meātus m (genitive meātūs); fourth declension

1. (literal) a going, passing, motion, course
2. (transferred sense) a way, path, passage
   • Cornelius Tacitus, De origine et situ germanorum 1.6–8:

     ‘Danubius molli et clementer edito montis Abnobae iugo effusus plures populos adit, donec in Ponticum mare sex meatibus erumpat; septimum os paludibus hauritur.’

     “The Danube pours down from the gradual and gently rising slope of Mount Abnoba, and visits many nations, to force its way at last through six channels into the Pontus; a seventh mouth is lost in marshes.”
     

   1. the avenues of sensation in the body

Inflection

Fourth-declension noun.

	singular	plural
nominative	meātus	meātūs
genitive	meātūs	meātuum
dative	meātuī	meātibus
accusative	meātum	meātūs
ablative	meātū	meātibus
vocative	meātus	meātūs

Descendants

Descendants

• → English: meatus
• → Italian: meato
• → Spanish: meato

References

• “meatus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “meatus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “meatus”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.