What does "hypothalamus" mean?

A region of the forebrain located below the thalamus, forming the basal portion of the diencephalon, and functioning to regulate body temperature, some metabolic processes and governing the autonomic nervous system.

What is a synonym for "hypothalamus"?

Common synonyms include: cerebellum, cerebral cortex, cerebrum, convolution, fissure, gray matter.

Hypothalamus

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A region of the forebrain located below the thalamus, forming the basal portion of the diencephalon, and functioning to regulate body temperature, some metabolic processes and governing the autonomic nervous system.
"To avoid catastrophe, the brain has its trusty control centre, the hypothalamus, which tells the body to cool itself by sweating or to warm itself by shivering."
2
a basal part of the diencephalon governing autonomic nervous system wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

cerebellum cerebral cortex cerebrum convolution fissure gray matter

Example

More examples

"The sight memory organ is below the hypothalamus."

Etymology

From hypo- + thalamus.

Related phrases

autonomic nervous system

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.