Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various devices worn in the vagina to support or correct the position of the uterus or rectum.
  • noun A contraceptive diaphragm.
  • noun A medicated vaginal suppository.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In medicine, an instrument made, in various forms, of elastic or rigid materials, and worn in the vagina to remedy various uterine displacements.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An instrument or device to be introduced into and worn in the vagina, to support the uterus, or remedy a malposition.
  • noun A medicinal substance in the form of a bolus or mass, designed for introduction into the vagina; a vaginal suppository.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A medical device similar to the outer ring of a contraceptive diaphragm, most commonly used to support a displaced uterus; also called therapeutic pessary.
  • noun contraception A diaphragm.
  • noun medicine A vaginal suppository.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a contraceptive device consisting of a flexible dome-shaped cup made of rubber or plastic; it is filled with spermicide and fitted over the uterine cervix

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pessarie, from Late Latin pessārium, from pessus, pessum, from Greek pessos, oval-shaped stone, pessary.]

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Examples

  • Sometimes urinary incontinence is so severe that medication, a device called a pessary, or surgery is the only option to get it under control.

    Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause M.D. Vivian Pinn 2006

  • Treatment may involve use of a vaginal pessary, which is a device placed in the vagina for support.

    Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause M.D. Vivian Pinn 2006

  • Treatment may involve use of a vaginal pessary, which is a device placed in the vagina for support.

    Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause M.D. Vivian Pinn 2006

  • Treatment may involve use of a vaginal pessary, which is a device placed in the vagina for support.

    Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause M.D. Vivian Pinn 2006

  • Sometimes urinary incontinence is so severe that medication, a device called a pessary, or surgery is the only option to get it under control.

    Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause M.D. Vivian Pinn 2006

  • Sometimes urinary incontinence is so severe that medication, a device called a pessary, or surgery is the only option to get it under control.

    Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause M.D. Vivian Pinn 2006

  • Treatment may involve use of a vaginal pessary, which is a device placed in the vagina for support.

    Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause M.D. Vivian Pinn 2006

  • Sometimes urinary incontinence is so severe that medication, a device called a pessary, or surgery is the only option to get it under control.

    Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause M.D. Vivian Pinn 2006

  • Afterwards, as Dottie is preparing to leave, he tells her to get herself a "pessary" (this is American for a diaphragm).

    Fifty years of the pill 2010

  • _ -- These are reliable only when carefully adjusted over the mouth of the womb, and many women find it very difficult to adjust this kind of pessary correctly; hence numbers of failures.

    Safe Marriage A Return to Sanity Ettie A. Rout 1899

  • Another sixteenth-century herbal, by English botanist John Gerard, stated that dittany of Crete, whether taken in a drink or used in a pessary (vaginal suppository), “bringeth away dead children; it procureth the monethly termes [menstruation], and driveth foorth the secondine or the afterbirth.”

    Plant of the Month: Dittany | JSTOR Daily Allison Miller 2020

  • Vaginal hormones come as a cream, gel or pessary and are cheap, costing the NHS around £5 for the cream.

    ‘Millions of women are suffering who don’t have to’: why it’s time to end the misery of UTIs Kate Muir 2023

Comments

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  • “(The first big victory had the memorable name of U.S. v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries.) ”

    The New York Times, What Every Girl Should Know, by Gail Collins, May 7, 2010

    May 9, 2010

  • I like this part of that article:

    'One of his targets was Margaret Sanger, a nurse who wrote a sex education column, “What Every Girl Should Know,” for a left-wing New York newspaper, The Call. When Comstock banned her column on venereal disease, the paper ran an empty space with the title: “What Every Girl Should Know: Nothing, by Order of the U.S. Post Office.”'

    May 10, 2010

  • Hey! That's iroquoisy. Someone had listed Marxist, so I was looking at the Reds list, then I was looking up the movie Reds, then I was reading about Emma Goldman, and that brought me to Margaret Sanger.

    May 10, 2010

  • Happy 50th Anniversary of the Pill, everyone. :-)

    May 11, 2010

  • Watson used this on Mary after she got sick after having their baby.

    June 10, 2012