Surgeon

How to spell surgeon

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce surgeon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does surgeon mean?

1. nounA doctor qualified to treat injury or disease by performing operations.

Surgeon in a sentence

• The surgeon explained the risks of the procedure before the operation.

• After years of training, she finally qualified as a heart surgeon.

Where does surgeon come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek kheirourgos, which literally meant 'one who works with the hands', built from kheir 'hand' and ergon 'work'. From this came the Greek and Latin word for the medical craft, kheirourgia and chirurgia, the practice of healing by manual operation rather than by drugs. The term passed into Old French as cirurgien, where the awkward opening consonants were smoothed, and English adopted it in the 1300s as 'surgien' or 'surgeon'. The collapse of that long classical cluster is exactly why the modern spelling looks so unlike its 'hand-work' root, and why the soft '-geon' ending catches people out. A distant cousin from the very same ergon 'work' survives in everyday words like 'energy' and 'ergonomic'.

How the word is built

• surg- (from Greek kheirourgos: one who works with the hands)
• -eon (agent/noun ending via Old French -ien)