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 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
It is even probable that the trephine holes found in prehistoric skulls 50,000 years old were made for curative purposes.
From Time Magazine Archive
The pericranium should then be raised from the centre, for a space large enough to hold the crown of the trephine.
From A Manual of the Operations of Surgery For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners by Joseph Bell
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
No special treatment was undertaken, but the patient was trephined, with the purpose of improving his mental condition.
From Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Walter L. (Walter Lytle) Pyle
The wound was dressed and trephined, and the results awaited.
From The Lost Art of Reading by Gerald Stanley Lee
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 Alexander Miles
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
Once the trephining of the skull was over . . . my mood underwent a change.
From Time Magazine Archive
"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
Increasing belief in Colonel Elliot's view that trephining should be the operation of choice in any form of glaucoma, makes it difficult to consider operations other than trephining in anything but a spirit of disfavor.
From Glaucoma A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 by Willis O. Nance
It affords an explanation of the motive for trephining the skull among ancient peoples, to afford a more ready passage for the "vital essence" to and from the skull.
From The Evolution of the Dragon by G. Elliot Smith
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.
