Wiktionary

surgery

English

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Etymology

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From Middle English surgerie, from Old French surgerie, from Latin chirurgia, from Ancient Greek χειρουργία (kheirourgía), from χείρ (kheír, “hand”) + ἔργον (érgon, “work”). Doublet of chirurgy.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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surgery (countable and uncountable, plural surgeries)

  1. (medicine, usually uncountable) A procedure involving major incisions to remove, repair, or replace a part of a body.
    Surgery is often necessary to prevent cancer from spreading.
    • 2022 October 17, Rachel E. Gross, “Half the World Has a Clitoris. Why Don’t Doctors Study It?”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      When performed poorly, a labiaplasty — a procedure to reduce the size of the labia minora, and one of the fastest-growing cosmetic surgeries worldwide — can also damage nerves, leading to genital pain and loss of sexual sensation.
  3. (medicine) The medical specialty related to the performance of surgical procedures.
  4. A room or department where surgery is performed.
    • 2006, Philip Ball, The Devil's Doctor, Arrow, published 2007, page 51:
      The physician's proper place was in the library, not in the surgery.
  6. (British) A doctor's office; a clinic.
    I dropped in on the surgery as I was passing to show the doctor my hemorrhoids.
  7. (British) A medical practitioner’s office hours.
    • 1972, James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small:
      Surgery is from six to seven o’clock. If you wanted to bring a dog in, that would be your best time.
  8. (British) Any arrangement where people arrive and wait for an interview with certain people, particularly a politician. cf. clinic.
    Our MP will be holding a surgery in the village hall on Tuesday.
  9. (finance, bankruptcy, slang) A pre-packaged bankruptcy or "quick bankruptcy".
  10. (topology) The production of a manifold by removing parts of one manifold and replacing them with corresponding parts of others.
  11. (by extension, figurative) Drastic changes made to anything.
    • 2019, Ian Griffiths, Programming C# 8.0: Build Cloud, Web, and Desktop Applications, page 716:
      The C# compiler evidently performs some major surgery on your code each time you use the await keyword.

Synonyms

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Hypernyms

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Hyponyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

References

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Anagrams

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Middle English

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Noun

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surgery

  1. Alternative form of surgerie
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