red blood cell
noun
variants
or less commonly red blood corpuscle
or red cell
or red corpuscle
: any of the hemoglobin-containing cells that carry oxygen to the tissues and in mammals are typically biconcave disks which lack a nucleus and cellular organelles and are formed from nucleated cells of the red bone marrow
Note: The number of red blood cells ranges from four to six million in each cubic millimeter of normal human blood. The red color of blood is due to the presence of hemoglobin within the red blood cells.
called also erythrocyte
compare white blood cellExamples of red blood cell in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
By the start of 2025, she’d been confined to a hospital in Dresden, Germany, for more than two months, being dosed with multiple immunosuppressive drugs and receiving up to three daily transfusions of red blood cells, as her care team tried and failed to control a massive disease flare.
—
Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 9 Apr. 2026
Antibodies that my body developed to fight the mycoplasma bacteria also destroyed my red blood cells, rendering me briefly anemic.
—Jerome Groopman, New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2026
The most common symptom is a serious skin wound that may require grafts, but the toxin may also damage red blood cells and cause life-threatening kidney failure.
—Matthew Cordes, The Conversation, 6 Apr. 2026
The process rapidly reduces the number of infected red blood cells in the patient’s system, replacing them with donor cells, corresponding author David Leaf told STAT.
—O. Rose Broderick, STAT, 3 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for red blood cell
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Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 9 Apr. 2026
Antibodies that my body developed to fight the mycoplasma bacteria also destroyed my red blood cells, rendering me briefly anemic.
—Jerome Groopman, New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2026
The most common symptom is a serious skin wound that may require grafts, but the toxin may also damage red blood cells and cause life-threatening kidney failure.
—Matthew Cordes, The Conversation, 6 Apr. 2026
The process rapidly reduces the number of infected red blood cells in the patient’s system, replacing them with donor cells, corresponding author David Leaf told STAT.
—O. Rose Broderick, STAT, 3 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for red blood cell
Cite this Entry
“Red blood cell.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/red%20blood%20cell. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.
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