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
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
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
If a fracture is found the surgeon should trephine so as to relieve the brain of any pressure of blood that might be affecting it.
From Old-Time Makers of Medicine The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages by James Joseph Walsh
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
Suppose he had never been trephined, when would his intelligence have returned?
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861 by Various
The purpose of an iridectomy is to avoid the danger of the iris in the neighborhood of the wound being drawn and impacted in the trephined hole.
From Glaucoma A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 by Willis O. Nance
The boy was trephined, and the comminuted fragments removed; in about six weeks recovery was nearly complete.
From Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Walter L. (Walter Lytle) Pyle
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
In former days trephining was a much more frequent operation than it is now, and apparently more successful.
From A Manual of the Operations of Surgery For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners by Joseph Bell
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 Alexander Miles
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