trephine
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of trephine
1620–30; spelling variant of trefine, originally trafine, blend of trapan (variant of trepan 1 ) and Latin phrase trēs fīnēs three ends (the inventor's explanation)
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
We aspirated all brain tissue inside the trephine.
From Nature ● Mar. 21, 2017
He excises the cornea with a circular saw called a trephine, whose diameter is a shade more than one-sixth of an inch.
From Time Magazine Archive
He has already applied the trephine to the cold-storage eye which an assistant holds by means of sterile gauze.
From Time Magazine Archive
The sharp point of this she pressed into her scalp over a trephine hole.
From Time Magazine Archive
A slight prominence and a fissure was discovered in the temporal bone, and over this a trephine was applied.
From Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 Being Mainly a Clinical Study of the Nature and Effects of Injuries Produced by Bullets of Small Calibre by Makins, George Henry
But with items such as a circa 1500 Austrian amputation saw and trephined Peruvian skulls from 4,000 years ago, upon which cranial surgery was performed, it’s aware of its yuck factor.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 11, 2018
Dr. Erich Kosterlitz had trephined the girl as a last effort to cure her of epilepsy.
From Time Magazine Archive
He trephined the skull, extracted the bullet that had lodged beneath it, and bound back in place that erratic eye.
From The Backwash of War The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse by La Motte, Ellen Newbold
When the infection has spread from the frontal sinus, the skull is trephined in the frontal region, the precise site being indicated by the œdematous area in the scalp, and the diseased bone is removed.
From Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. by Miles, Alexander
The wound was dressed and trephined, and the results awaited.
From The Lost Art of Reading by Lee, Gerald Stanley
The museum’s artist-in-residence program features forensic sculptor Kathleen Gallo, who has given faces to the ancients who endured trephining.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 5, 2021
"The operation of trephining the skull, which was widely and successfully practiced by primitive peoples in nearly all parts of the world, may be considered the highest achievement of prehistoric surgeons."
From Time Magazine Archive
Once the trephining of the skull was over . . . my mood underwent a change.
From Time Magazine Archive
The treatment of punctured wounds consists in enlarging the wounds in the soft parts, trephining the skull, and removing any foreign body that may be in it, purifying the track, and establishing drainage.
From Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. by Miles, Alexander
Others, including von Bergmann and Tilmanns, consider that the risk of such sequelæ ensuing is not sufficient to justify a prophylactic operation of such severity as trephining.
From Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. by Miles, Alexander
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
