red marrow
1
4.8
- noun
- /rɛd ˈmɛroʊ/
- Specialized
- Doctors often check the levels of red marrow when assessing a patient's overall blood health.
Examples
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The red marrow found in the pelvis plays an essential role in generating new blood cells throughout life.
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The majority of the bone metastases occur in bones containing the red marrow, predominantly such as the spine, ribs, pelvis, and ends of long bones.
Academic text (2007) -
The red marrow in children's bones is crucial for the production of red blood cells.
Synonyms
1
4.9
Soft, spongy part inside some bones that makes red blood cells
How Productive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'red' (the color) with 'marrow' (bone tissue that produces blood cells); it denotes the type of marrow that is red and produces red blood cells. This is a straightforward descriptive noun phrase following normal adjective + noun composition and has clear cross-linguistic equivalents, so a B1 learner who knows both words would understand it.
Etymology
Red marrow is a plain, descriptive name: marrow is the soft tissue inside bones and red shows it is the kind full of blood-making cells. So the term refers to the bone tissue that 'produces red blood cells'.