[FRIAM] looking for a word

[∄ uǝʃƃ]

"Plenum" is a fantastic idea. I rejected "manifold" originally because I've tried to use it in conversations with biologists before and it just didn't seem to communicate the idea. It baffles me a bit because the word is so directly available as "many folds".  But perhaps it's too engineering-oriented.  Plenum may well be what I'm looking for, though.  It has similar problems to "plexus", though, in its etymology.  Where "plexus" can imply braiding where the threads don't merge/branch, but merely criss-cross, "plenum" can mean "full space", which might well refer to the center of the bed (leaf nodes in the lung or tree case, smallest diameter in the capillary bed case) where the network comes closest to filling the space.  Plexus has an advantage over plenum, though, because it's already used in the way I want.  E.g. afferent and efferent plexuses.

On 08/20/2018 10:18 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:
> Whatever happened to 'inlet or exhaust manifolds' or 'plenum'? (The exhausts from the 7 cyclone sets come together in a plenum before exiting the reactor.) Too mundane?

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