throat

Pluralthroats

Formsthroats, throating, throated

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The front part of the neck, between the chin and the collarbone.

   The doctor pressed gently along her throat to check for swollen glands.

   He loosened his tie when the collar pressed against his throat.

   Note

   The bodily sense the others borrow from: Old English þrote, traced back to an Indo-European root meaning "to swell, become stiff". From the neck, the word spread to anything with a narrow passage, such as the neck of a bottle, a chimney, or a sail's corner. Here it names the outer surface, the part that can be struck or sliced; the passage within is the gullet or windpipe.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The passage inside the neck through which food and air pass; the gullet or windpipe.

   The smoke from the campfire made her throat burn.

   He cleared his throat before stepping up to the microphone.

   Similargullet, pharynx, windpipe

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A narrow opening in a vessel, such as the constricted neck of a bottle or jug.

   The wine glugged as air fought its way past the throat of the jug.

   Choose a funnel whose throat is wide enough for the seeds to pass through.

   Similarneck, mouth, opening

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The opening of a tubular organ, or the outer end of the tube of a flower whose petals are joined.

   Dark veins converge at the throat of the petunia, guiding bees inward toward the nectar.

   Insects slip down the slick throat of the pitcher plant's tubular trap.

   Similarmouth

   Note

   Botany's throat is where a flower's tube opens out. In a monopetalous (sympetalous) corolla, it is the outer end of the tube, where it widens into the spreading limb. The Latin term is faux, more often met in the plural fauces, and it extends to the orifice of any tubular organ. Dark guide-veins converging here are a familiar sight.

5. 5
   verbcolloquialtransitive

   To take something into the throat.

   The pelican throated the entire catch before the gulls could steal it.

   Cormorants can throat fish nearly the length of their own necks.

   Similarswallow, gulp, gobble, devour

   Oppositeregurgitate

   Note

   In current writing, the verb turns up mostly in sexual contexts, as close kin to deepthroat, and many readers will hear it that way first. Animal uses such as a pelican throating a fish are perfectly literal. In ordinary prose, though, swallowed or gulped down avoids an unintended double meaning.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   The narrowed section of a chimney between the gathering, where the funnel contracts as it rises, and the flue.

   The mason narrowed the throat to improve the fireplace's draft.

   A damper installed at the throat lets you seal off the chimney when it's not in use.

   Note

   Count Rumford pinned the term down in his essay "Of Chimney Fire-places" (1796), placing the throat at the lower end of the chimney's canal, where it meets the top of the open fireplace. Builders also call it the chimney throat. It is the point that shapes the draft, and the natural seat for a damper.

7. 7
   nounabbreviation

   Short for station throat.

   Congestion in the throat delayed every departure that morning.

   A signal failure at the throat can paralyze an entire terminal.

   Note

   Railway shorthand, and an apt metaphor. A station throat is the often constricted stretch at the end of a station, where running lines fan out into platform tracks, so trains squeeze through it as food passes down a neck. Every arrival and departure crosses the throat. That is why a single fault there can back up a whole terminal.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   In sailing, the corner at the top of the forward edge of a staysail or of a sail set with a boom and gaff.

   The throat halyard hoists the corner of the sail nearest the mast.

   The crew checked the lacing at the throat before getting underway.

   Note

   Sailors name the corners of a gaff sail by where they sit. The throat is the high corner tucked against the mast, and the peak is the corner carried out at the gaff's far end. The throat halyard raises this corner, so it is the line a crew sets first when hoisting.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   The angle at which the arm of an anchor joins the shank.

   Stress concentrates at the throat when the anchor digs into hard ground.

   The blacksmith reinforced the throat where the arm had begun to crack.

   Note

   Anchor-makers use the word for the inner angle where an arm meets the shank. When the fluke is set and load comes onto the shank, bending stress gathers in this angle, so this is where cracks start and repairs go. Hunt's Yachting Magazine, describing Glover's Safety Anchors in 1868, uses it as a plain working term.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    The end of a gaff that lies nearest the mast.

    The jaws at the throat of the gaff grip the mast as the sail goes up.

    A line passed around the mast holds the throat in place while the peak swings free.

    Note

    Nautical usage pairs the throat with the peak, the spar's outer end. Here the gaff ends in jaws that embrace the mast, and the throat halyard attaches at this point to hoist it. The word is shared with the sail's upper fore corner, and for good reason: that corner of a gaff sail is made fast at this same inboard end.

11. 11
    nouncountable

    The inner side of the angle of a timber knee, the curved wooden bracket that joins a ship's beams to its frames.

    The shipwright trimmed the throat of the knee so it seated flush against the beam.

    Rot often starts in the throat, where moisture lingers longest.

    Note

    Wooden shipbuilding treats a knee almost like a limb, and its throat is the concave inner face. Shipwrights hewed knees from naturally curved compass timber so the grain ran unbroken through the bend, which kept the throat strong. It is also where moisture lingers longest, and so where rot tends to begin.

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