smooth muscle
- noun
- /smuːð ˈmʌsəl/
- Specialized
- When the smooth muscle contracts, it aids in moving food through the digestive tract.
- smooth muscle cells
- vascular smooth muscle
- bronchial smooth muscle
And so the Airways have smooth muscle and when they become activated, the smooth muscle can contract or relax.
- And so the Airways have smooth muscle and when they become activated, the smooth muscle can contract or relax.
- It's a gas that can cause relaxation of the smooth muscles that relate to the vasculature not just of your nose but of your brain and for all the tissues of your body.
Examples
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So just about every organ, gland tissue and smooth muscle is innervated in this dual fashion.
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The main effect is a bronchodilator action directly on the β2-adrenoceptors of smooth muscle, providing relief for asthma sufferers.
Academic text (2011) -
It's called smooth muscle, not striated muscle.
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All her muscles, including her smooth muscles, were essentially paralyzed.
Fiction book (1999) -
And so the Airways have smooth muscle and when they become activated, the smooth muscle can contract or relax.
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Viagra is a modern drug that relaxes the smooth muscles and was the first drug of its kind.
Blog text (21) -
The usual cause in in children is spasm of the muscle, smooth muscle around the Airways and the lungs.
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She has an obstruction that is not allowing the normal peristalsis of the smooth muscle to continue.
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Patients with asthma have increased bronchial smooth muscle tone and mucus hypersecretion, possibly the result of increased cholinergic activity.
Academic text (2017) -
The smooth muscle in the walls of blood vessels helps regulate blood pressure.
Synonyms
A muscle in organs like the stomach or bladder that works without you thinking, not the heart
Antonyms
- Specialized
A type of body tissue with light and dark stripes that moves bones when you want
How Automatic
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is compositional: 'smooth' describes a property of the 'muscle', so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a type of muscle with a smooth (non‑striped) appearance/function. The term is also cross‑linguistically paralleled in many languages and follows ordinary adjective + noun formation, so its basic meaning is immediately accessible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Smooth muscle comes from how the tissue looks under a microscope: its cells have no stripes and so look smooth rather than banded. That's why the name means the muscle that is 'not striped' and that 'works without thinking' inside organs.