Definitions

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

  • noun The part of the respiratory tract between the pharynx and the trachea, having walls of cartilage and muscle and containing the vocal cords enveloped in folds of mucous membrane.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The part of the windpipe in which vocal sound is made and modulated; the organ of phonation.

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

  • noun (Anat.) The expanded upper end of the windpipe or trachea, connected with the hyoid bone or cartilage. It contains the vocal cords, which produce the voice by their vibrations, when they are stretched and a current of air passes between them. The larynx is connected with the pharynx by an opening, the glottis, which, in mammals, is protected by a lidlike epiglottis.

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

  • noun An organ of the neck of mammals involved in breath control, protection of the trachea and sound production, housing the vocal cords, and that is situated at the point where the upper tract splits into the trachea and the oesophagus/esophagus.

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

  • noun a cartilaginous structure at the top of the trachea; contains elastic vocal cords that are the source of the vocal tone in speech

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin, from Greek larunx.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek λάρυγξ (larunks)

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