Definitions

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

  • noun A device that circulates fresh air and expels stale or foul air.
  • noun Medicine A machine that supplies oxygen or a mixture of oxygen and air, used in artificial respiration to control or assist breathing.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who or that which ventilates
  • noun One who or that which brings some matter to public notice, as a speaker or a newspaper.

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

  • noun A contrivance for effecting ventilation; especially, a contrivance or machine for drawing off or expelling foul or stagnant air from any place or apartment, or for introducing that which is fresh and pure.

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

  • noun A device that circulates fresh air and expels stale or noxious air
  • noun medicine A respirator

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

  • noun a device that facilitates breathing in cases of respiratory failure
  • noun a device (such as a fan) that introduces fresh air or expels foul air

Etymologies

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Examples

  • And I agree that starving or dehydrating or just stopping a ventilator is cruel.

    Defending Your Existence 2008

  • Similarly, the Workgroup's approach overtly confined its triage guidelines to those patients in hospitals or in need of acute care, and excluded patients on long-term ventilator support in long-term care facilities.

    Jacob M. Appel: The Coming Ethical Crisis: Oxygen Rationing 2009

  • To a patient whose lungs are temporarily compromised, short-term ventilator support is often the difference between life and death.

    Jacob M. Appel: The Coming Ethical Crisis: Oxygen Rationing 2009

  • The ventilator is a tube that runs through Dax's mouth and into his lungs to facilitate respiration.

    Subtle Update (Music (For Robots)) 2005

  • The best thing about a ventilator is that while it's in place, the patient can't talk.

    February 2005 2005

  • According to the social worker's notes, the hospital anticipated that the patient would need long-term ventilator care and that, as a legal immigrant with less than five years in this country, he would not qualify for Arizona's Medicaid coverage.

    t r u t h o u t 2008

  • But, a zygote, embryo, fetus, child, adolescent, adult, and senior citizen on a ventilator are all human persons and therefore must not be killed.

    ProWomanProLife » Bring out the philosophy profs! 2010

  • Patients with artificial airways (tracheostomies) are generally admitted to the Neonatal Infant Center (NIC), Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), or the long term ventilator unit (Progressive Care Unit, PCU), depending on the age of the child and acuity of the condition.

    technology dependence center 2010

  • Didn't Karen tell Norman a ventilator was the only "right" course?

    Barbara Coombs Lee: Palliative Care Information Act at the Bedside: Achieving Truly Informed Consent Barbara Coombs Lee 2011

  • It had become clear that my mother would not make another of her miraculous comebacks; the chief resident admitted that keeping her on the ventilator was a futile exercise.

    In the Fullness of Time Emily W. Upham 2010

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