Surgery

How to spell surgery

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce surgery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does surgery mean?

1. nounMedical treatment in which a surgeon cuts into or repairs the body.
2. nounA place where a doctor or dentist sees patients, or the hours during which they do so.
3. nounA regular session at which a Member of Parliament meets constituents to hear concerns.

Surgery in a sentence

• The patient needed surgery to repair the torn ligament.

• The local surgery opens at eight and closes at six.

• The MP holds a surgery every Friday to meet local residents.

• Recovery after major surgery can take several weeks.

• She booked an appointment at the doctor's surgery for her cough.

• Voters queued outside the surgery to raise their housing complaints.

Where does surgery come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek kheirourgia, which literally meant 'working by hand', formed from kheir 'hand' and ergon 'work'. Latin took this in as chirurgia, the medical craft of treating the body by hand rather than by medicine alone. Old French smoothed the awkward classical cluster down to surgerie, and English borrowed that form in the 1300s, which is why the modern spelling keeps the surg- opening and drops the original 'ch'. The same ergon 'work' root sits inside 'energy' and 'allergy', while kheir survives in 'chiropractor'. The spelling trap is mostly the unstressed middle and the -ery ending, since the word sounds like 'sur-jree' yet keeps that softer second vowel on paper.

How the word is built

• surg- (from Greek kheirourgia: working with the hands)
• -ery (noun suffix denoting a practice or place)