Medulla

Look up medulla or medullary in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A medulla (/mᵻˈdʌlə/; plural medullas or medullae) is the middle of something. The word came to English and ISV from Latin, where it means marrow (and came from medius, middle). Its anatomical uses include:

• Medulla oblongata, a part of the brain stem
• Medulla spinalis, an alternative name for the spinal cord
• Renal medulla, a part of the kidney
• Adrenal medulla, a part of the adrenal gland
• Medulla ossea, the marrow inside a bone
• Medulla of ovary
• Medulla of thymus
• Medulla of lymph node
• Medulla (hair)
• Medullary cavity, the area inside a bone where marrow is stored
• Medullary ray (disambiguation)
• Used in medullated, a deprecated word for myelinated neurons.

Non-medical uses of the term include:

• Medúlla, a 2004 music album by Icelandic singer Björk
• Medulla, Florida, a U.S. city
• Las Médulas, Ancient Roman gold mines in León, Spain
• Medulla Grammatice or Medulla Grammaticae, a fifteenth-century Latin–Middle English dictionary
• Medulla (lichenology), a layer of the internal structure of a lichen
• In botany the word pith is loosely used as synonymous with medulla.