uterus

• WordNet 3.6
  • n uterus a hollow muscular organ in the pelvic cavity of females; contains the developing fetus
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• Interesting fact: During pregnancy, the average woman's uterus expands up to five hundred times its normal size.
• • Uterus (Zoöl) A receptacle, or pouch, connected with the oviducts of many invertebrates in which the eggs are retained until they hatch or until the embryos develop more or less. See Illust. of Hermaphrodite in Append.
  • Uterus (Anat) The organ of a female mammal in which the young are developed previous to birth; the womb.
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• • n uterus pl. uteri (-rī).
  • n uterus The womb; that part of the female sexual passage to which a ripe ovum is conveyed from the ovary, and in which it is detained in gestation until the fetus is matured and expelled in parturition. It is a section of an oviduct, originally a Müllerian duct, enlurged, thickened, united with its fellow of the opposite side, or otherwise modified, to serve as a resting-place for the ovum while this is developed to or toward maturity as an embryo or a fetus, whence it is then discharged through a cloaca or a vagina. The uterus is single in most Monodelphia, and double in Didelphia and Ornithodelphia. When united, but incompletely, it constitutes a uterus bicornis, or two-horned womb. In birds the name uterus is given to that terminal part of the oviduct where the egg is detained to receive its shell. The non-pregnant human uterus is a pear-shaped organ about 3 inches long, with a broad, flattened part above (the body), and a narrow, more cylindrical part below (the cervix). Within is a cavity which passes out into the Fallopian tube on each side above, and below opens into the vagina. The cavity narrows as it passes into the cervix at the internal os, and continues downward as the cervical canal, to terminate at the external os uteri or os tincæ. The uterus is supported by the broad ligament, a transverse fold of peritoneum which embraces it on each side, and by accessory ligaments, such as the round, vesicouterine, and recto-uterine ligaments. It consists of a serous or peritoneal coat, a middle coat of smooth muscular fibers, forming most of its thickness, and an epithelial lining. See also cut under peritoneum.
  • n uterus In invertebrates, as Vermes, a special section of the oviduct, or sundry appendages of the oviduct, which subserve a uterine function. Gegenbaur, Comp. Anat. (trans.), p. 182. See cuts under germarium, Rhabdocœla, Cestoidea, and Nematoidea. In Fungi. See peridium.
  • n uterus Same as hernia of the uterus.
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• • Uterus the womb
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