cardiac
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Of or relating to the heart.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kahrdeeakSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkɑɹdiæk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
biologymedicine
Of or relating to the heart
“The patient experienced a sudden cardiac arrest.”
biologymedicine
Pertaining to the cardia of the stomach; cardial (cardial is the usual adjective in this sense).
noun
A person with heart disease.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Of or relating to the heart
Used this way, cardiac is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
“The patient experienced a sudden cardiac arrest.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use cardiac
- “She visited a doctor for a check-up related to her cardiac health.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Absence of systole.
An abnormal rate of muscle contractions in the heart.
The complete cycle of events in the heart from the beginning of one heart beat to the beginning of the next.
Obtained from a number of plants and used to stimulate the heart in cases of heart failure.
Obtained from a number of plants and used to stimulate the heart in cases of heart failure.
Inadequate blood flow to the heart muscles.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- ventricularadjective
- atrialadjective
- cardiologynoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.