Glossopharyngeal nerve

The glossopharyngeal nerve is the ninth cranial nerve. The 12 cranial nerves, the glossopharyngeal nerve included, emerge from or enter the skull (the cranium), as opposed to the spinal nerves which emerge from the vertebral column. The glossopharyngeal nerve supplies the tongue, throat, and one of the salivary glands (the parotid gland). Problems with the glossopharyngeal nerve result in trouble taste and swallowing. "Glosso-" comes from the Greek "glossa", the tongue and "pharynx" is the Greek for throat. So the glossopharyngeal nerve is the nerve that serves the tongue and throat.

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glossopharyngeal nerve n a mixed nerve that is either of the ninth pair of cranial nerves, that has sensory fibers arising from the superior and petrosal ganglia and motor fibers arising with those of the vagus nerve from the lateral wall of the medulla, and that supplies chiefly the pharynx, posterior tongue, and parotid gland with motor and sensory fibers including gustatory and autonomic secretory and vasodilator fibers called also glossopharyngeal, ninth cranial nerve

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the ninth cranial nerves (IX), which supplies motor fibres to part of the pharynx and to the parotid salivary glands and sensory fibres to the posterior third of the tongue and the soft palate.

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nervus glossopharyngeus.