tibia

Borrowed from Latin tībia (“shin bone, leg”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɪbiə/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪbiə

tibia (plural tibias or tibiae)

1. (anatomy) The inner and usually the larger of the two bones of the leg or hind limb below the knee, the shinbone.
   • 2013 February 6, Jen Christiensen, “Vonn’s injury ‘career-delayer,’ not ‘career ender’”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     Her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL) are torn and Vonn has a lateral fracture of the tibial plateau, the upper end of the tibia or shin bone.

2. (entomology) The second segment from the end of an insect's leg, between the femur and tarsus.
3. (arachnology) The third segment from the end of an arachnid's leg, between the patella and metatarsus.
4. (music) A musical instrument of the flute kind, originally made of the leg bone of an animal.

   Coordinate term: aulos

   • 1975, Francis M. Collinson, The bagpipe: the history of a musical instrument, page 188:

     The musician on the left is playing the zampogna, a bagpipe with two chanters and two drones. The zampogna is thought to be the bag-provided descendant of the ancient mouth-blown divergent pipes of the Romans, known as the tibia.

• bone flute
• shin
• shinbone, shin bone

• “tibia”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Borrowed from Spanish tibia.

• IPA^(key): /tibia/ [t̪i.β̞i.a]
• Rhymes: -ia, -a
• Hyphenation: ti‧bi‧a

tibia inan

1. shin, shinbone

• “tibia”, in Euskaltzaindiaren Hiztegia [Dictionary of the Basque Academy] (in Basque), Euskaltzaindia [Royal Academy of the Basque Language]

Learned borrowing from Latin tībia. Compare the inherited doublet tige.

• IPA^(key): /ti.bja/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

tibia m (plural tibias)

1. shin
2. tibia, shinbone

• protège-tibia

• “tibia”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Attested since 1409 (tiva). Learned borrowing from Latin tībia.

• IPA^(key): [ˈtiβjɐ]

tibia f (plural tibias)

1. (anatomy) tibia, shinbone
2. (archaic) shin
   • 1409, J. L. Pensado Tomé, editor, Tratado de Albeitaria, Santiago de Compostela: Centro Ramón Piñeiro, page 97:

     nota que a dita enfirmidade non enpeeçe aos potros mais prestalles porque daqesto engrosam as tiuas por llos homores que se uoluen aas coixas

     note that this sickness is not detrimental for the foals, but it benefits them because the shins swell because of the humors that return to the thighs

• Barreiro, Xavier Varela; Guinovart, Xavier Gómez (2006–2018), “tibia”, in Corpus Xelmírez: corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval [Corpus Xelmírez: linguistic corpus of Medieval Galicia] (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
• Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, Ernesto Xosé González Seoane, María Álvarez de la Granja, editors (2003–2018), “tibia”, in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega

Borrowed from Latin tībia.

tibia f (plural tibie)

1. (anatomy, zoology) tibia, shinbone
2. (music) an early wind instrument

• tibiale

• abiti, baiti

Meaning may have evolved from “stalk, reed pipe” to “shinbone”, the latter being used by Pliny and later authors; flutes were originally made from shinbones. Possibly connected to Ancient Greek σίφων (síphōn, “siphon, tube”), the irregular forms suggesting a non-Indo-European loan or substrate source, but as if from pseudo- or regional Proto-Indo-European *tweybʰ-. There are no solid IE cognates outside of the Greek word,^[1] though comparisons to Proto-Slavic *stьbъ (“stalk”) have been drawn. Compare tuba (“trumpet”), tubus (“tube”), possibly from the same substrate source.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈtiː.bi.a]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈtiː.bi.a]

tībia f (genitive tībiae); first declension

1. (anatomy) the large shin bone, tibia; leg
2. (figuratively) a pipe, flute (originally of bone)

First-declension noun.

• “tibia”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “tibia”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "tibia", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “tibia”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎^[2], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • instrumental music: nervorum et tibiarum cantus
    
  • to play the flute: tibias inflare
    
  • to play the flute: tibiis or tibiā canere
    
  • to sing to a flute accompaniment: ad tibiam or ad tibicinem canere
    
• “tibia”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “tibia”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin

Borrowed from French, Latin tībia.

tibia f (plural tibii)

1. tibia, shinbone

   Synonym: (popular) fluier

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

• IPA^(key): /ˈtibja/ [ˈt̪i.β̞ja]
• Rhymes: -ibja
• Syllabification: ti‧bia

From Latin tepida.

tibia

1. feminine singular of tibio

Borrowed from Latin tibia.

tibia f (plural tibias)

1. (anatomy) tibia, shinbone

• “tibia”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025