noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The act of feeling or pushing on various parts of a patient’s body to determine medical condition such as the normality of organs or the presence or absence of tumors, swelling, muscle tension, etc. countable, uncountable
2. 2
   a method of examination in which the examiner feels the size or shape or firmness or location of something (of body parts when the examiner is a health professional) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

caressingfeelingfingeringfrictionhandlingmanipulation

Example

More examples

"The psoas is hard to reach with palpation."

Etymology

From palpate + -ion.

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