Definitions

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

  • adjective Relating to or resembling a drum.
  • adjective Anatomy Of or relating to the middle ear or eardrum.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of, pertaining to, or resembling a tympan or tympanum; similar to or acting like a drumhead.
  • In anatomy, of or pertaining to the tympanum: as, the tympanic cavity.
  • noun A bone of the ear of man and mammals, supporting the tympanic membrane, generally annular or tubular, forming most of the meatus auditorius externus, or external auditory passage.
  • noun Below mammals, in animals in which the true tympanic is rudimentary or wanting, the quadrate or pedicellate bone, the representative of the malleus; the suspensorium of the lower jaw, or especially its uppermost piece, the hyomandibular or epitympanic: so called by some who suppose it to be the tympanic bone, from the fact that it in part supports the tympanic membrane. See quadrate, n., 3 , hyomandibular, epitympanic, and other compounds of tympanic there cited
  • noun In ornithology, sometimes, the tympano-occipital, considered as the true representative in birds of the tympanic of a mammal.

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

  • adjective Like a tympanum or drum; acting like a drumhead.
  • adjective (Anat.) Of or pertaining to the tympanum.
  • adjective (Anat.) a bone of the skull which incloses a part of the tympanum and supports the tympanic membrane.
  • adjective (Anat.) See the Note under Ear.
  • noun (Anat.) The tympanic bone.

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

  • adjective of, relating to, or resembling a drum
  • adjective anatomy relating to the eardrum or middle ear; tympanal
  • adjective music resonant

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

  • adjective associated with the eardrum
  • adjective resembling a drum

Etymologies

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

[From Latin tympanum, drum; see tympanum.]

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