Definitions

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

  • noun Medicine An excessive accumulation of serous fluid in tissue spaces or a body cavity.
  • noun Botany A condition of plants characterized by blisterlike swellings on the leaves or other parts, caused by an accumulation of water.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In pathology, a puffiness or swelling of parts arising from accumulation of serous fluid in interstices of the areolar tissue: as, edema of the eyelids.
  • noun A genus of bombycid moths, founded by Walker in 1855, having the palpi pilose, rather long, ascending in the male and porrect in the female, with the third joint lanceolate.

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

  • noun (Med.) Same as œdema.

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

  • noun US, pathology An excessive accumulation of serum in tissue spaces or a body cavity
  • noun US A similar swelling in plants caused by excessive accumulation of water

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

  • noun swelling from excessive accumulation of watery fluid in cells, tissues, or serous cavities

Etymologies

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

[Middle English ydema, from Greek oidēma, a swelling, from oidein, to swell.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek οἴδημα (oidēma, "swelling"), from οἰδέω (oideō, "I swell").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word edema.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.