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bloodstream

UK/ˈblʌd.stɹɪim/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,346 of 15,258neutral

The bloodstream is the blood as it flows round the body. Enter the bloodstream, in the bloodstream, released into the bloodstream.

The phrase is used for anything carried by the blood — a drug, an infection, a hormone — and a full circuit takes about a minute at rest. A drug injected reaches the bloodstream at once, which is why it acts faster than one swallowed.

Definitions of bloodstream

  1. 1nounbloodstreamThe blood as it flows round the body.B2

    “Alcohol passes from the stomach into the bloodstream and soon reaches the brain.”

bloodstream is a flow.

Where it comes from

Blood plus stream, a nineteenth-century compound from medical writing.

From blood + stream.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

bloodstream in the wild

  • Exocrine glands are one of two types of glands in the human body, the other being endocrine glands, which secrete their products directly into the bloodstream.

    Exocrine gland

  • Once in the bloodstream, peptide hormones travel throughout the body and bind to specific receptors on target cell membranes.

    Peptide hormone

  • The pancreas releases glucagon when the amount of glucose in the bloodstream is too low.

    Glucagon

  • Diagnosis is made by finding bacteria in the bloodstream.

    Septicemic plague

  • If an organism only appears in one of the two sets, it is more likely to represent contamination with skin flora than a true bloodstream infection.

    Blood culture

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.