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surgical

adjectivecommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈsɜːd͡ʒɪkəl//
  • United States//ˈsɝd͡ʒɪkəl//

Of, relating to, used in, or resulting from surgery.

adjective

  1. 1

    Of, relating to, used in, or resulting from surgery.

    Similar studies of rats have employed four different intracranial resorbable, slow sustained release systems—surgical foam, a thermal gel depot, a microcapsule or biodegradable polymer beads.

  2. 2

    figurativePrecise or very accurate.

    The building was destroyed with a surgical air-strike.

  3. 3

    figurativeExcruciatingly or wearyingly drawn-out.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰes- Proto-Indo-European *-ōr Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰésōr Proto-Graeco-Phrygian *gʰéhr̥ Proto-Hellenic *kʰéhər Ancient Greek χείρ (kheír) Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-om Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom Proto-Graeco-Phrygian *wérgon Proto-Hellenic *wérgon Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon) Ancient Greek -ουργός (-ourgós) Ancient Greek χειρουργός (kheirourgós) Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Hellenic *-kos Ancient Greek -κός (-kós) Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós) Ancient Greek χειρουργῐκός (kheirourgĭkós)bor. Late Latin chīrurgicus Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Proto-Indo-European *-is Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Medieval Latin cirurgicālisder. Middle French cirurgicalbor. Middle English cirurgicalder. English surgical From Middle English cirurgical, borrowed from Middle French cirurgical, from Medieval Latin cirurgicālis, ultimately from Ancient Greek χειρουργία (kheirourgía), from χείρ (kheír, “hand”) + ἔργον (érgon, “work”). Replaced Old English Old English læċe (“doctor, physician”). By surface analysis, surgery + -ical.

Forms

comparative
more surgical
superlative
most surgical
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).