STETHOSCOPE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does stethoscope mean? 

• STETHOSCOPE (noun)
  The noun STETHOSCOPE has 1 sense:

1. a medical instrument for listening to the sounds generated inside the body

  Familiarity information: STETHOSCOPE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STETHOSCOPE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A medical instrument for listening to the sounds generated inside the body

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("stethoscope" is a kind of...):

medical instrument (instrument used in the practice of medicine)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "stethoscope"):

fetoscope; foetoscope (a stethoscope placed on the pregnant woman's abdomen to listen for the fetal heartbeat)

 Context examples 

Your doctor can hear a heart murmur with a stethoscope.

(Heart Valve Diseases, NIH: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)

An instrument for blood pressure monitoring consisting of a sphygmomanometer and a stethoscope to hear blood flow.

(Auscultatory Blood Pressure Monitor, NCI Thesaurus)

Listening with a device, such as a stethoscope, to anatomical locations that produce audible sounds like the heart, lungs and abdomen.

(Auscultation, NCI Thesaurus)

Lucy's heart beat a trifle more audibly to the stethoscope, and her lungs had a perceptible movement.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)