artery

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Anatomy Any of the muscular elastic tubes that form a branching system and that carry blood away from the heart to the cells, tissues, and organs of the body.
2. n. A major route of transportation into which local routes flow. See Synonyms at way.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The trachea or windpipe.
2. n. One of a system of cylindrical, membranous, elastic, and muscular vessels or tubes, which convey the blood from the heart to all parts of the body by ramifications which as they proceed diminish in size and increase in number, and terminate in minute capillaries which unite the ends of the arteries with the beginnings of the veins. There are two principal arteries: the aorta, which rises from the left ventricle of the heart and ramifies through the whole body, and the pulmonary artery, which conveys venous blood from the right ventricle to the lungs, to undergo arterialization. Most arteries are composed of three coats: an outer or fibrous, of condensed connective tissue well supplied with blood-vessels and nerves; a middle or elastic, consisting chiefly of circular, non-striated, muscular fibers; and an inner, thin, smooth, and dense, composed, from without inward, of an elastic fenestrated membrane, a layer of connective tissue, and a lining of endothelium. The outer coat is the (tunica) adventitia; the middle, the (tunica) media; the inner, the (tunica) intima. The arteries in the human body which have received special names are about 350 in number. They range in caliber from more than the thickness of a finger to microscopic dimensions.
3. n. A main channel in any ramifying system of communication, as in drainage.
4. To supply with arteries; figuratively, to traverse like arteries.

Wiktionary

1. n. An efferent blood vessel from the heart, conveying blood away from the heart regardless of oxygenation status; see pulmonary artery.
2. n. A major transit corridor.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. obsolete The trachea or windpipe.
2. n. (Anat.) One of the vessels or tubes which carry either venous or arterial blood from the heart. They have tricker and more muscular walls than veins, and are connected with them by capillaries.
3. n. Hence: Any continuous or ramified channel of communication.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a major thoroughfare that bears important traffic
2. n. a blood vessel that carries blood from the heart to the body