Other forms: membranes
A membrane is a thin flexible sheet of tissue. A cell membrane, the mucous membrane, a permeable membrane.
The important ones are selective: a cell membrane lets some things through and blocks others, and that control is what makes a cell a cell. Industry copies the idea for filtering water. The Latin membrana meant the skin covering a limb.
1nounmembraneA thin flexible sheet of tissue.
“A thin membrane separates the inside of the egg from its shell.”
membrane is a sheet of tissue.
Latin membrana means a skin or parchment, from membrum, a limb or member.
Latin
membrāna — skin or membrane that covers parts of the body
English, today
membrane
Late Middle English -, borrowed from Latin membrāna (“skin or membrane that covers parts of the body”), from membrum + -āna. a doublet of membrana.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA