Surgical

How to spell surgical

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce surgical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does surgical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to surgery or to operations performed by a surgeon.
2. adjectiveExtremely precise and carefully targeted, as if performed with the accuracy of surgery.

Surgical in a sentence

• The hospital invested in new surgical equipment for the operating theatre.

• The editor made a few surgical cuts to tighten the report.

• Recovery from the surgical procedure took several weeks.

• The team executed the plan with surgical precision.

Where does surgical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back through 'surgery' to the Greek kheirourgia, which literally meant 'working with the hands', from kheir 'hand' and ergon 'work'. The Romans borrowed this as chirurgia, the practice of treating injury and disease by manual operation, and the term passed into Old French as cirurgie or surgerie, with the heavy classical spelling worn smoothly down. English took 'surgery' in the 1300s, and the adjective 'surgical' was formed later, around the 1700s, by adding the familiar -ical ending. The original 'hand-work' sense explains why surgery has always meant hands-on, operative treatment rather than medicine taken from a bottle. The same Greek ergon 'work' survives in 'energy' and 'ergonomics', a useful reminder that surgery began as skilled manual labour.

How the word is built

• surg- (from surgery, ultimately Greek kheir 'hand'
• ergon 'work')
• -ical (adjective suffix)