blood fluke
1
7.8
- noun
- /blʌd fluk/
- Specialized
:
duela sanguínea
- The blood fluke is a parasitic flatworm that can cause schistosomiasis in humans.
Examples
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It turns out that they eventually find another blood fluke, and they mate and curl together while inside your veins.
Blog text (34) -
Infection occurs when the free-swimming larvae of the blood fluke, called cercariae, come into contact with and penetrate the skin of a traveler either swimming or wading in water.
Academic text (2012) -
What does a blood fluke do to a human?
Blog text (34) -
I was amazed and scared when I learned about blood flukes and how long they could be in my body.
Blog text (34) -
Some parasites, like the blood flukes, can live inside the human body for more than forty years.
Blog text (34) -
Some of the different types of parasites are parasitic wasps, hookworms, and blood flukes.
Blog text (34) -
He describes the life cycle of a blood fluke, starting with the secretion of enzymes in a human's skin, and ending with how blood flukes can live about forty years.
Blog text (34) -
He describes the life cycle of a blood fluke, starting with the secretion of enzymes in a human's skin, and ending with how blood flukes can live about forty years.
Blog text (34) -
Infection with a blood fluke can lead to serious health problems in affected individuals.
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Doctors warn that blood flukes can survive in the blood vessels of mammals for several years.
Synonyms
1
9.9
A small worm that lives in the blood of people or animals and can cause serious disease
A small worm that lives in people's blood and causes a serious illness
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is transparently built from 'blood' (the bodily fluid/location) modifying 'fluke' (a parasitic flatworm), so the meaning — a fluke that lives in or affects the blood — is directly inferable. This modifier+head noun pattern is common cross-linguistically and follows straightforward compositional semantics, making it accessible to learners who know both constituents.
Etymology
The name blood fluke comes from a simple image: fluke is a word for a flat worm and blood shows where it lives. So the name means a flat worm that lives in the 'blood', which helps explain why it causes disease.