Surgically

How to spell surgically

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce surgically

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does surgically mean?

1. adverbBy means of an operation performed by a surgeon.
2. adverbWith the clean precision and care associated with surgery.

Surgically in a sentence

• The tumour was surgically removed during a three hour operation.

• The editor surgically trimmed the report down to a single page.

• The damaged ligament had to be surgically repaired.

• The accountant surgically separated the two sets of expenses.

Where does surgically come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This adverb traces back to the Greek word kheirourgia, which literally meant 'working by hand', combining kheir 'hand' with ergon 'work'; in ancient usage it described the craft of treating the body with the hands and with instruments. The Greek term passed into Latin as chirurgia and then into Old French, where it was worn down to forms like surgerie and cirurgie, losing the awkward 'ch' cluster along the way. English took the word in the 1300s as 'surgery', and the adjective 'surgical' followed, with the adverb 'surgically' built on top by adding the everyday '-ly' ending. The smoothed-down spelling is why we write 'surg-' rather than anything resembling the original 'cheir-', even though the same hand root survives more visibly in words such as 'chiropractor'. The modern sense, meaning done with the precision of surgery, grew naturally from that original idea of careful, instrument-guided work by the hand.

How the word is built

• surg- (from Greek kheir 'hand'
• ergon 'work')
• -ic (adjective)
• -al (adjective)
• -ly (adverb)