meatus

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

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

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

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: A Novel, New York, N.Y.; Boston, Mass.: 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, 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

• meatal
• meato-
• permeate

• ear canal
• foramen

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

• Matsue, autems, mutase

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /meˈaː.tus/, [meˈäːt̪ʊs̠]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /meˈa.tus/, [meˈäːt̪us]

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

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

1. perfect passive participle of meō

First/second-declension adjective.

• commeātus
• intrameātus
• permeātus
• remeātus

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

meātus m (genitive meātūs); fourth declension

1. (literally) a going, passing, motion, course
2. (transferred sense) a way, path, passage
   1. the avenues of sensation in the body

Fourth-declension noun.

• “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