Meaning

noun a bodily passage or tube lined with epithelial cells and conveying a secretion or other substance

noun a continuous tube formed by a row of elongated cells lacking intervening end walls

noun an enclosed conduit for a fluid

originBorrowed from Latin ductus (“leading, conducting”, noun), from dūcō (“to lead, conduct, draw”) + -tus (action noun suffix). Doublet of ductus and douit. Also via Medieval Latin ductus (“a conveyance of water; a channel”), which itself has the first mentioned etymology.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0