Meaning of Tympanum | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A drum.
   archaic
2. Any of various anatomic structures in various animals with analogy to a drum head:
3. The eardrum (tympanic membrane, membrana tympanica).
4. The main portion of the middle ear: the tympanic cavity (cavitas tympani).
5. A thin tense membrane covering the hearing organ on the leg or body of some insects, sometimes adapted (as in cicadas) for producing sound.
6. A membranous resonator in a sound-producing organ in frogs and toads.
7. (in certain birds) The labyrinth at the bottom of the windpipe.
8. A vertical recessed triangular space between the sides of a pediment, typically decorated.
9. The recessed triangular space within an arch, and above a lintel or a subordinate arch, spanning the opening below the arch.
10. A drum-shaped wheel with spirally curved partitions by which water is raised to the axis when the wheel revolves with the lower part of the circumference submerged; used for raising water, as for irrigation.

Equivalents

Examples

“When he came around, the star sound was gone. The ringing it left in his tympana was a great confusion.”

“It was a black-and-white picture of a Romanesque doorway, with flanking saints and a lively Last Judgement in the tympanum […].”

CEFR level