Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The thin, semitransparent, oval-shaped membrane that separates the middle ear from the external ear.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The middle ear; the tympanum. See tympanum, and first cut under ear.
  • noun More especially, the tympanic membrane: as, to burst or puncture the ear-drum. See cuts under ear and tympanic.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) The tympanum. See Illust. of ear.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A thin membrane that separates the outer ear from the middle ear and transmits sound from the air to the malleus.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the membrane in the ear that vibrates to sound

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

ear +‎ drum

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Examples

  • NEW YORK — Christiane Amanpour stood on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday in a khaki shirt with a backdrop of Cairo in crisis, rattling off reports from the street in Egypt and noting the presence of flyovers by fighter jets in what she described as eardrum-ripping sound.

    Amanpour's Trip To Egypt Shows 'This Week' Changes AP 2011

  • Christiane Amanpour stood on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday in a khaki shirt with a backdrop of Cairo in crisis, rattling off reports from the street in Egypt and noting the presence of flyovers by fighter jets in what she described as eardrum-ripping sound.

    The Seattle Times 2011

  • Cairo trip highlights shift for Amanpour Christiane Amanpour stood on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday in a khaki shirt with a backdrop of Cairo in crisis, rattling off reports from the street in Egypt and noting the presence of flyovers by fighter jets in what she described as eardrum-ripping sound.

    The Seattle Times 2011

  • If the eardrum is no longer physically connected to the inner ear, i.e. loss of a single ossicle, the impedance matching effectively reduces to zero (in fact "poor impedance matching" is just an oxymoron), but hearing does not require all parts of the system.

    A Decade Spanning Single Exchange 2008

  • Potential complications include: bleeding infection allergic reaction to X-ray dye (contrast reaction) dimpling or paleness at the injection site nerve injury injury to the eardrum (with TMJ only)

    Therapeutic Joint Injections 2010

  • The hearing in that ear was already impaired because an infection had been mistreated, and now she lost nearly all the hearing when a doctor, attempting to remove the rice, seems to have punctured her eardrum.

    Saluting a Centennial Amy Finnerty 2012

  • I had no idea how I was going to make it through the night, but in the early hours of Saturday morning my eardrum ruptured.

    Archive 2009-02-01 2009

  • On an airplane a baby may cry for their usual reasons, but they may also experience ear pain due to their narrower eustachian tubes behind the eardrum becoming blocked.

    Corinne McDermott: Crying Babies & Crybabies on a Plane... Corinne McDermott 2011

  • I had no idea how I was going to make it through the night, but in the early hours of Saturday morning my eardrum ruptured.

    National Health Insurance Needed, Reason #247,342,589: desmoinesdem 2009

  • Ben instinctively yanked it back, but his eardrum felt punctured.

    Shore Thing Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi 2011

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