Duct
//dʌkt// noun, verb
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A pipe, tube or canal which carries gas or liquid from one place to another.
"heating and air-conditioning ducts"
- 2 an enclosed conduit for a fluid wordnet
- 3 A pipe, tube or canal which carries gas or liquid from one place to another.; An enclosure or channel for electrical cable runs, telephone cables, or other conductors.
- 4 a bodily passage or tube lined with epithelial cells and conveying a secretion or other substance wordnet
- 5 A pipe, tube or canal which carries gas or liquid from one place to another.; A vessel for conveying lymph or glandular secretions such as tears or bile.
Show 4 more definitions
- 6 a continuous tube formed by a row of elongated cells lacking intervening end walls wordnet
- 7 A pipe, tube or canal which carries gas or liquid from one place to another.; A tube or elongated cavity (such as a xylem vessel) for conveying water, sap, or air.
- 8 A layer (as in the atmosphere or the ocean) which occurs under usually abnormal conditions and in which radio or sound waves are confined to a restricted path.
- 9 Guidance, direction. obsolete
"[…] otherwise to express His care and love to mankind, viz., in giving and consigning to them His written word for a rule and constant director of life, not leaving them to the duct of their own inclinations."
Verb
- 1 To enclose in a duct. transitive
- 2 To channel something (such as a gas) or propagate something (such as radio waves) through a duct or series of ducts. transitive
Example
More examples"I was told my tear duct was blocked."
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin ductus (“leading, conducting”, noun), from dūcō (“to lead, conduct, draw”) + -tus (action noun suffix). Doublet of ductus and douit. Also via Medieval Latin ductus (“a conveyance of water; a channel”), which itself has the first mentioned etymology.
Related phrases
More for "duct"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.