turbinate

1. 1.

   any of the scrolled spongy bones of the nasal passages in man and other vertebrates

   Synonymsturbinate boneturbinal

   Broaderbone

   Narrowernasal concha

   Part ofnose

Other forms of turbinate

plural

turbinates·

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 turbinate

What does turbinate mean?

turbinate means "of or relating to the scroll-shaped turbinate bones in the nasal passages". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in turbinate?

turbinate has 3 syllables and divides as tur-bi-nate under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for turbinate?

Close synonyms include coiling, helical, spiral, spiraling, volute. 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 turbinate a common word?

turbinate 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.