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sinuses

noun

Simple meaning

An irregular venous or lymphatic cavity, reservoir, or dilated vessel.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

synuhsuhz

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈsaɪnəsəz

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. anatomy

    An irregular venous or lymphatic cavity, reservoir, or dilated vessel.

  2. pathology

    An abnormal cavity or passage such as a fistula, leading from a deep-seated infection and discharging pus to the surface.

  3. anatomyzootomy

    A pouch or cavity in a bone or other tissue, especially one in the bones of the face or skull connecting with the nasal cavities (the paranasal sinus).

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: An irregular venous or lymphatic cavity, reservoir, or dilated vessel.

Used this way, sinuses 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.

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.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Pouch

paranasal sinuses

Relating

dural sinuses

Other combinations

venous sinusesfrontal sinusesnasal sinusesmaxillary sinusesaccessory sinusesair sinuses

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • sinusitisnounRelated term

    Inflammation of one of the paranasal sinuses.

  • sinus headachenounRelated term

    A headache resulting from congestion or infection in the paranasal sinuses.

  • sinus paranasalesnounRelated term

    Any of the paired sinuses in the bones of the face adjacent to the nasal cavity that are lined with mucous membrane that is continuous with the lining of the nasal cavities.

  • sinus cavernosusnounRelated term

    Either of a pair of large venous sinuses in the cranial cavity.

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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.