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lungs

UK/lʌŋz/US/lʌŋz/
nounB1Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,384 of 15,258leans spoken

Your lungs are the two organs in your chest that fill with air. Spongy, enormous inside, and worked by the muscle below them.

They take oxygen into the blood and send carbon dioxide back out. The word is nearly always plural in everyday speech, though a single lung can be removed and people live with one. It gives English some vivid phrases, since shouting at the top of your lungs means as loudly as possible. Trees are often called the lungs of the planet, which is the same idea on a larger scale.

Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator · CC BY 2.5

Definitions of lungs

  1. 1nounlungsThe pair of organs in the chest used for breathing.B1

    “He filled his lungs with cold air.”

Also accepted in games: lung

Phrases it lives in

  • at the top of your lungs — as loudly as you possibly can

Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 10 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

lungs in the wild

  • The lungs are the primary organs of the respiratory system in many animals, including humans.

    Lung

  • Humans have two lungs, a right lung and a left lung.

    Lung

  • Gas exchange in the lungs occurs in millions of small air sacs.

    Respiratory system

  • The throat's trachea carries inhaled air to the bronchi of the lungs.

    Throat

  • Depending on how blocked the airways are (patency), there may or may not be a flow of gas between the lungs and the environment.

    Apnea

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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.