How to Pronounce Femur

Femur is pronounced FEE-mer. The first syllable rhymes with "fee" or "bee," and the second syllable sounds like "mer" as in "mermaid." The stress falls on the first syllable, so you say it a bit louder: FEE-mer.

Many people mistakenly pronounce it FEM-ur (rhyming with "hem"), putting the stress on the first syllable but shortening the "ee" sound. The correct way is to stretch that first syllable and say FEE-mer, not FEM-ur.

Femur breaks into two syllables: fe-mur. When you say it out loud, you pause slightly between the two parts, so it sounds like two separate sounds pushed together.

Femur is the medical word for your thigh bone—the single long bone in your upper leg. If someone says "femur" instead of "thigh bone," they're talking about the same thing.

Femur comes from Latin, where it simply meant "thigh" or "thigh bone." Medical professionals kept the original Latin name because it's the same across many languages and sounds professional in a medical setting.

Words like femoral (meaning related to the femur or thigh) come from the same root. For example, doctors might talk about the "femoral artery," which is an artery in the thigh area. The root femur- appears in several anatomy terms.

You could say: "The femur is the longest bone in your body" or "She broke her femur in the accident." You use it the same way you'd use any bone name, like "radius" or "tibia."

Femur doesn't have a common abbreviation the way some medical terms do. Doctors and health professionals simply say or write out "femur" in full, or use the related adjective "femoral" when describing things near the thigh.