Meaning & use
auscultating
Last updated
“auscultating” is a form of “auscultate”.
Meaning
verbtransitive or intransitivemedical
Listening to the natural sounds made inside someone's body, usually through a stethoscope, to check how the heart, lungs or gut are working.
Grammar: Usually takes an object: she is auscultating the patient's chest; it can also stand alone: the nurse is auscultating.
Patterns
- auscultate something
- auscultate someone's chest
The doctor was auscultating the child's lungs while he took slow breaths.
After auscultating the abdomen, the vet decided the horse needed more tests.
Students practise auscultating the heart on a training mannequin before they meet real patients.
Word forms
| base form | auscultate |
|---|---|
| third person singular | auscultates |
| past tense | auscultated |
| -ing form | auscultating |
Common combinations
- auscultating the chest
- By auscultating the chest, she heard a faint wheeze on the left side.
- auscultating the heart
- He spent a minute auscultating the heart before speaking to the family.
- begin auscultating
- Please stay quiet while I begin auscultating.
- auscultating with a stethoscope
- Auscultating with a stethoscope is a basic skill for any nurse.
- auscultating the lungs
- Auscultating the lungs revealed crackles that pointed to infection.
Synonyms and how they differ
- listening to
- This is the plain everyday phrase, whereas auscultating names a precise clinical procedure with a specific purpose.
- examining
- Examining is much broader and can involve looking or touching, while auscultating is only about listening to internal sounds.
- sounding
- Sounding is an older medical term for tapping or listening to the body and now sounds dated beside auscultating.
Word family
- auscultate verb
- to listen to the body's internal sounds for diagnosis
- auscultation noun
- the act or procedure of listening to internal body sounds
- auscultatory adjective
- relating to auscultation
- stethoscope noun
- the instrument doctors use for auscultation
Commonly confused: auscultating or ascultating?
auscultating vs ascultating
This is a common misspelling; the correct spelling has an u before the l: auscultating.
Practice
Which tool would a doctor most likely use while auscultating a patient's heart?
Choose one answer.
Auscultating means listening to internal sounds, and a stethoscope carries those sounds to the doctor's ears. A blood pressure cuff measures pressure rather than sounds of the heart itself.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “auscultating”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.