nasopharynx
noun
nasopharynx is a noun meaning “The nasal part of the pharynx, lying behind the nose and above the level of the soft palate” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled N-A-S-O-P-H-A-R-Y-N-X and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 21 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of nasopharynx is nasopharynxes or nasopharynges.
What does nasopharynx mean?
noun
- 1
The nasal part of the pharynx, lying behind the nose and above the level of the soft palate.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce nasopharynx?
- US
Nasopharynx has 4 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)-Sapaa-nasopharynx.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of nasopharynx
- nasopharynxes plural
- nasopharynges plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is nasopharynx?
Nasopharynx appears about once in every 21 million words in written English, the 139,999th 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).
Nasopharynx in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense nasal part of the pharynx:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Spanish | nasofaringe |
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 nasopharynx come from?
From naso- + pharynx.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).