English

Noun

rale ‎(plural rales)

1. (medicine, now chiefly in plural) An abnormal clicking, rattling or crackling sound, made by one or both lungs and heard with a stethoscope, caused by the popping open of airways collapsed by fluid or exudate, or sometimes by pulmonary edema.
   • 1840, CM Billard, A Treatise on the Diseases of Infants, page 416:

     Michael Colot, aged fifteen days, of a strong constitution, not having been sick from the time of birth, was, on the 22nd of November, taken with a violent cough, accompanied with a rale which could be heard without recourse to auscultation.

   • 1861, Austin Flint, American Medical Times, 7 Dec 1961:

     If you were to tell a patient that he had a ‘rhonchus’ in his chest, he would imagine that it was something formidable, while, if you said that he had a ‘râle’ he would not be alarmed.

   • 1894, Arthur Conan Doyle, Round Red Lamp:

     But after all the educated classes have a right to expect that their medical man will know the difference between a mitral murmur and a bronchitic rale.

Synonyms

• crackles

Anagrams

• earl, Earl
• lare
• lear
• real

See also

• crackles, crepitations
• bilateral; basal, basilar; bibasilar

Translations

Portuguese

Verb

rale

1. first-person singular present subjunctive of ralar
2. third-person singular present subjunctive of ralar
3. third-person singular imperative of ralar