Pulmonary means to do with the lungs. A medical word, and only a medical word.
It appears in the names of conditions and structures, so a pulmonary embolism is a clot in the lung, pulmonary fibrosis is scarring of the lung tissue, and the pulmonary artery is the one vessel that carries deoxygenated blood away from the heart, which is the exception to the usual rule about arteries. The word comes from Latin pulmo, a lung. Everyday English says lung as a modifier instead.
1adjectivepulmonaryRelating to the lungs.
“He was admitted with a suspected pulmonary embolism.”
Pulmonary is of the lung, from Latin pulmō. Its Proto-Indo-European ancestor left relatives right across Europe, in Greek, French, Lithuanian and Polish, and even in the Russian verb meaning to swim.
Proto-Indo-European
*pléu-mon-
Latin
pulmōnārius — of the lungs
English, today
pulmonary
Built from
Borrowed from Latin pulmōnārius (“of the lungs”), from pulmō (“lung”) + -ārius, from Proto-Indo-European pléu-mon-. Cognate with Greek πνευμόνι, French poumon, Lithuanian plaučiai, Polish płuco and Russian пла́вать (“to swim”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA