Word.ws English Dictionary

iron lungs

iron lungs is the plural of iron lung.

Meaning of iron lung

Noun

iron lung (plural iron lungs)

  1. A pneumonic device for assisted breathing.
    • To a polio victim who can no longer breathe for himself nothing is more disheartening than the thought of spending every hour of his life flat on his back in an iron lung.1953 October 19, “A Better Break for Polio Patients”, in LIFE, Time Inc, page 127
    Synonyms:
    negative pressure ventilator
  2. (Cockney, slang) A bung; a bribe.
    • Most criminal cases, when I was practising, were paid for by SLAB, which kept a vice-like grip on the purse strings, paying a pittance no self-respecting plumber would get out of bed for, so an iron lung (bung) was the order of the day when dealing with the professionals of the underworld.2023, James J. McIntyre, Jimmy Two Guns: The Life and Crimes of a Gangland Lawyer

Questions about iron lungs

What is iron lungs the plural of?
Iron lungs is the plural of iron lung.

Words near iron lungs in the dictionary

  1. iron ladies
  2. iron lady
  3. iron law
  4. iron liquor
  5. iron lung
  6. iron lungs
  7. iron maiden
  8. iron maidens
  9. iron man
  10. iron mans
  11. iron men

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: iron lungs (page history and authors); iron lung (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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