Word.ws English Dictionary

percuss

Syllables: per·cussUK/pəˈkʌs/US/pɚˈkʌs/

percuss verb: to strike; to hit; to knock; to give a blow to.

Verb

percuss (third-person singular simple present percusses, present participle percussing, simple past and past participle percussed)

  1. (transitive) To strike; to hit; to knock; to give a blow to.
    • Solid bodies, if they be very softly percussed, give no sound.
    • Give me thy hand Gonzalo, thou art in our favour, / For we do love to cheriſh lofty ſpirits, / Such as percuſſe the Earth, and bound / With an erected countenance to the clouds.c. 1619, John Ford (formerly attributed to Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher), The Laws of Candy, [Act II, Scene i], page 304
  2. (intransitive) To impact.
    • Falling on the roof of the caravan, the hailstones percussed noisily.
  3. (transitive) To attempt to pinpoint the location or other quality of something by tapping on an overlying surface.
    • The doctor percussed his chest to determine whether he had pneumonia.
    • Percussing a patient's spleen is best done while he is on his back.

Examples of percuss in a sentence

  • As you percuss the kidneys, check for pain or tenderness, behind other organs which suggests a kidney infection.2007, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Emergency Nursing Made Incredibly Easy!, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, →ISBN:
  • Percuss the abdomen when you suspect distention, fluid, or solid masses.2016, Susan F. Wilson, Jean Foret Giddens, Health Assessment for Nursing Practice, Elsevier Health Sciences, →ISBN, page 259:

Forms of percuss

third-person singular presentpercusses
present participlepercussing
past participlepercussed
pastpercussed

Origin of percuss

From Latin percussus, past participle of percutiō (“to strike, to beat”), from per (“through”) + quatiō (“to shake, to strike”).

Words that rhyme with percuss

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about percuss

What does percuss mean?
Percuss means to strike; to hit; to knock; to give a blow to.
How do you use percuss in a sentence?
As you percuss the kidneys, check for pain or tenderness, behind other organs which suggests a kidney infection.
What part of speech is percuss?
Percuss is a verb.
How do you pronounce percuss?
Percuss is pronounced /pəˈkʌs/ (UK).
What is the past tense of percuss?
The past tense of percuss is percussed.

Words near percuss in the dictionary

  1. percunctation
  2. percunctations
  3. percurrent
  4. percurrently
  5. percursory
  6. percuss
  7. percussant
  8. percussed
  9. percusses
  10. percussible
  11. percussing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: percuss (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “percuss.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/percuss. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.