fovea
/ˈfəʊ.vi.ə/noun
fovea is a noun meaning “A slight depression or pit in a bone or organ” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-V-E-A, and it appears about once in every 10 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fovea is foveas or foveae.
What does fovea mean?
noun
- 1
A slight depression or pit in a bone or organ.
- 2
The retinal fovea, or fovea centralis, responsible for sharp central vision.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce fovea?
- /ˈfəʊ.vi.ə/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-fovea.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of fovea
- foveas plural
- foveae plural
- foveæ plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is fovea?
Fovea appears about once in every 10 million words in written English, the 92,628th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does fovea come from?
From Latin fovea (“ditch, pit”). Doublet of foiba.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).