Word.ws English Dictionary

tripod position

tripod position noun: a physical stance a person in respiratory distress takes leaning their hands on their thighs with their arms supported on them; leaning or sitting against a wall in a similar fashion.

Noun

tripod position (uncountable)

  1. A physical stance a person in respiratory distress takes leaning their hands on their thighs with their arms supported on them; leaning or sitting against a wall in a similar fashion
    • A patient in the tripod position is likely to have a problem with the ventilatory pump or a need for high levels of ventilation.2005, Richard M. Schwartzstein, Michael J. Parker, Respiratory physiology: a clinical approach, page 16

Origin of tripod position

From tripod + position.

Questions about tripod position

What does tripod position mean?
Tripod position means a physical stance a person in respiratory distress takes leaning their hands on their thighs with their arms supported on them; leaning or sitting against a wall in a similar fashion.
What part of speech is tripod position?
Tripod position is a noun.

Words near tripod position in the dictionary

  1. tripmeter
  2. tripmeters
  3. tripmine
  4. tripod
  5. tripod grasp
  6. tripod position
  7. tripodal
  8. tripoded
  9. tripodes
  10. Tripodi
  11. tripodial

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tripod position (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: Tripodpositionwikt.ogg.

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