Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A coarse rattling sound somewhat like snoring, usually caused by secretion in a bronchial tube.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A râle, usually a bronchial or cavernous râle.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) An adventitious whistling or snoring sound heard on auscultation of the chest when the air channels are partially obstructed. By some writers the term rhonchus is used as equivalent to râle in its widest sense. See râle.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun medicine A dry rattling sound heard during breathing, due to deposits in the bronchial tubes.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a sound like whistling or snoring that is heard with a stethoscope during expiration as air passes through obstructed channels

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin, a snoring, from Greek *rhonkhos, variant of rhenkos, rhenkhos, from rhenkein, to snore.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin rhonchus, from an unattested variant of Ancient Greek ῥέγχος (rhenkhos, "snoring").

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Examples

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  • What a great word!

    November 17, 2011