macrophage
/ˈmækɹɔʊː.feɪd͡ʒ/noun
macrophage is a noun meaning “A white blood cell that phagocytizes necrotic cell debris and foreign material, including viruses, bacteria, and tattoo ink. It presents foreign…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-A-C-R-O-P-H-A-G-E and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of macrophage is macrophages.
What does macrophage mean?
noun
- 1
A white blood cell that phagocytizes necrotic cell debris and foreign material, including viruses, bacteria, and tattoo ink. It presents foreign antigens on MHC II to lymphocytes. Part of the innate immune system.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce macrophage?
- US /ˈmækɹɔʊː.feɪd͡ʒ/
Macrophage has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Zazollo-macrophage.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of macrophage
- macrophages plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is macrophage?
Macrophage appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 56,788th 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).
Macrophage in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense type of white blood cell:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | macrophage |
| German | Makrophage, Fresszelle |
| Portuguese | macrófago |
| Spanish | macrófago |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does macrophage come from?
From macro- + -phage, both from Ancient Greek.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).