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
The sharp point of this she pressed into her scalp over a trephine hole.
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
The case had almost to a certainty been smashed to pieces; still, there was a chance that the trephine had escaped injury.
From The Pools of Silence by H. De Vere (Henry De Vere) Stacpoole
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
Flat bones, such as the skull or ilium, must be trephined and the pus cleared out from both aspects of the bone.
From Manual of Surgery Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. by Alexis Thomson
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
I do not advise trephining in the secondary glaucoma following intumescent cataract, for in such cases the semi-fluid lens bulges into and blocks the trephine hole.
From Glaucoma A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 by Willis O. Nance
In this paper I shall say a few words about the large number of operative procedures that, apart from trephining, or, preferably, trepanation, have been urged in the treatment of the various forms of glaucoma.
From Glaucoma A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 by Willis O. Nance
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.
