tympanum

noun tympanums · tympana

1. archaic A drum.
2. The eardrum (tympanic membrane, membrana tympanica). When he came around, the star sound was gone. The ringing it left in his tympana was a great confusion.
3. The main portion of the middle ear: the tympanic cavity (cavitas tympani).
4. A thin tense membrane covering the hearing organ on the leg or body of some insects, sometimes adapted (as in cicadas) for producing sound.
5. A membranous resonator in a sound-producing organ in frogs and toads.
6. (in certain birds) The labyrinth at the bottom of the windpipe.
7. A vertical recessed triangular space between the sides of a pediment, typically decorated.
8. The recessed triangular space within an arch, and above a lintel or a subordinate arch, spanning the opening below the arch. It was a black-and-white picture of a Romanesque doorway, with flanking saints and a lively Last Judgement in the tympanum […].
9. A drum-shaped wheel with spirally curved partitions by which water is raised to the axis when the wheel revolves with the lower part of the circumference submerged; used for raising water, as for irrigation.