dilator

1. 1.

   a muscle or nerve that dilates or widens a body part

   Broaderbody part
2. 2.

   a drug that causes dilation

   Broaderdrug

   Narrowervasodilator
3. 3.

   a surgical instrument that is used to dilate or distend an opening or an organ

   Synonymsdilater

   Broadersurgical instrument

Other forms of dilator

plural

dilators·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about dilator

What does dilator mean?

dilator means "a muscle or nerve that dilates or widens a body part". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in dilator?

dilator has 3 syllables: di-la-tor. The stress falls on "di".

What is another word for dilator?

Close synonyms include dilater. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is dilator a common word?

dilator is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.