Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various instruments used for listening to sounds produced within the body.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An instrument used in auscultation to convey the sounds from the chest or other part of the patient to the ear of the observer.
  • To examine by means of a stethoscope.

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

  • transitive verb To auscultate, or examine, with a stethoscope.
  • noun (Med.) An instrument used in auscultation for examining the organs of the chest, as the heart and lungs, by conveying to the ear of the examiner the sounds produced in the thorax.

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

  • noun medicine A medical instrument used for listening to sounds produced within the body, often combined with a sphygmomanometer
  • verb transitive To auscultate, or examine, with a stethoscope.

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

  • noun a medical instrument for listening to the sounds generated inside the body

Etymologies

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

[French stéthoscope : Greek stēthos, chest + French -scope, an instrument for viewing (from Latin -scopium; see –scope).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From stetho- + -scope.

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Examples

  • Laennec later created a new instrument made from hollow wooden cylinder he called stethoscope, from the Greek words stethos (chest) and skopos (examination).

    Neatorama 2010

  • My question: who the heck does or will set government policy w.r.t. healthcare if not those who actually, you know, know a stethoscope from a beer bong?

    More on the Democratic party’s War on Breasts. - Moe_Lane’s blog - RedState 2009

  • Steve Perlstein writes, The basic view from behind the stethoscope is that health care would be a whole lot better if only the docs were given free rein to treat their patients, organize their practices, run the hospitals and set their own fees ….

    Wonk Room » The WonkLine: June 17, 2009 2009

  • That dramatic boardroom stethoscope is beginning to engender irrational hatred.

    Matthew Yglesias » Health Care and Wages 2010

  • The latest in stethoscope technology - the iSteth.

    Medpundit 2004

  • The latest in stethoscope technology - the iSteth.

    Archive 2004-11-01 2004

  • "Oh, that just makes you the medicines doctor, the other fella with the stethoscope is the disease doctor"

    Is There a Doctor on the Blog? 1 Dinosaur 2009

  • Stopping the heart -- putting it into atrial fib, so all you get with a stethoscope is a flutter -- is another nice trick.

    Lama Lama Ding Dong Steve Perry 2007

  • If the ear be placed on the abdomen, over the womb, the beating of the foetal heart can sometimes be heard quite plainly, and by the use of an instrument called the stethoscope, the sounds can be still more plainly heard.

    Searchlights on Health The Science of Eugenics B. G. Jefferis

  • I had found his pulse irregular and intermittent, I took out a stethoscope, which is a pocket-spyglass for looking into men's chests with your ears, and laid it over the place where the heart beats.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859 Various

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