placenta
Pronunciation: /pləˈsɛntə/
The English word “placenta” has 2 meanings listed here.
noun
- An organ in most mammals during gestation that supplies food and oxygen to the foetus and passes back waste. It is on the wall of the uterus and links to the foetus through the umbilical cord. It is expelled after birth.
- In flowering plants, the part of the ovary where ovules develop; in non-flowering plants where the spores develop.
Etymology
Learned borrowing from New Latin placenta (literally “flat cake”), an ellipsis of phrases such as placenta uterī (literally “womb cake”) and placenta uterīna (literally “uterine cake”), because of the flat round shape of the afterbirth. Doublet of palacsinta and palatschinke.
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More English words
- placemonger
- placemongering
- placename
- placeness
- placenta cake
- placenta praevia
- placental
- placental abruption
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.