What does deglutination mean?
Deglutination is the technical term for the act of swallowing — the coordinated process by which food or liquid, once chewed and formed into a bolus, is propelled from the mouth through the pharynx and oesophagus into the stomach. Although it may feel like a single deliberate movement, physiologists describe it as a sequence of overlapping phases involving muscles of the tongue, throat, and gullet, much of it governed by automatic reflexes rather than conscious control. The word belongs to formal registers: it appears in medical literature, speech-language pathology assessments, and historical physiology texts, where clinicians might speak of 'impaired deglutination' when a condition such as a stroke compromises safe swallowing. In everyday speech it would sound stilted, with 'swallowing' serving as the natural choice. It sits within a small family of Latinate terms for eating and drinking, alongside its close relative 'deglutition', which is now the preferred clinical synonym. For readers interested in the vocabulary of medicine, however, deglutination remains a precise and evocative way to name one of the body's most essential and most taken-for-granted acts.
nounThe act or process of swallowing; the passage of food or liquid from the mouth through the pharynx and oesophagus into the stomach.
- The physiological act of swallowing, in which a bolus of food or liquid is conveyed from the mouth through the pharynx and oesophagus into the stomach.
"The neurologist assessed the patient's deglutination after the stroke to rule out aspiration risk."
"Speech therapists evaluate deglutination to ensure that stroke patients can eat safely without aspirating."
"In classical physiology texts, deglutination was divided into oral, pharyngeal, and oesophageal phases."
Rarely pluralised; as an abstract process noun it normally appears in the singular, though plurals occur occasionally in clinical writing describing repeated acts of swallowing.
"The videofluoroscopy study recorded numerous deglutinations over the course of the meal."
Before you even taste your food, a reflex you can't consciously switch off — deglutination — has already begun moving it toward your stomach.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of deglutination
Deglutination derives from the Latin verb 'deglutire', meaning 'to swallow down', formed from the prefix 'de-' (down) and 'glutire' ('to swallow'), itself connected to 'gula', the Latin word for the throat or appetite. The term entered English through learned medical and physiological writing, where it long coexisted with its sibling 'deglutition'. Both reflect the era when anatomical terminology was drawn almost wholesale from Latin, and both survive today chiefly in specialist contexts.
How deglutination is actually used
A formal, technical term used chiefly in medical, physiological, and older scholarly writing; 'swallowing' is the ordinary English word, and 'deglutition' is the more frequently encountered technical synonym in modern clinical contexts.
Easily confused with deglutination
Both mean swallowing, but 'deglutition' is the far more common term in medical usage, while 'deglutination' is a rarer variant.