Weazands

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The windpipe or throat in human or animal anatomy ; a term historically used to refer to the gullet or passage for food and air in the neck
2. The anatomical structure known as the throat or gullet, especially in animals ; an archaic word designating the passageway for breathing and swallowing
3. An old term for the neck region, particularly the windpipe or food passage ; describing the organ involved in conveying air and sustenance in humans and animals

Etymology: "Weazands" is the plural of "weazand," which names the windpipe in the neck. The singular is the older and more common form in the sense of the throat's breathing tube, and the plural appears mainly when writers refer to several such passages, or to the throats of more than one creature. The word has a long pedigree in English, though its path is tangled. It belongs to a group of older English terms for the throat, and it survives today almost entirely in literary, historical, or humorous writing. A reader meeting it in a novel or a description of a hunt will usually understand it from context, since its sense has narrowed over the centuries to this one anatomical meaning.

Synonyms: throats, windpipes