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 has already applied the trephine to the cold-storage eye which an assistant holds by means of sterile gauze.
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
And Dr. Bird catches a man withdrawing "menthium" from human brains with a "needle," without the use of either x-ray or a trephine!
From Astounding Stories, July, 1931 by Various
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
The wound was dressed and trephined, and the results awaited.
From The Lost Art of Reading by Lee, Gerald Stanley
One buphthalmic eye trephined by myself gave good results.
From Glaucoma A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 by Nance, Willis O.
If the symptoms point to suppuration having occurred between the bone and the dura, the skull should be trephined and further bone removed with the rongeur forceps as may be required.
From Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. by Miles, Alexander
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
Those of us who have had the pleasure of seeing the trephining operation done by Col.
From Glaucoma A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 by Nance, Willis O.
This being the case one cannot truthfully say that trephining alone can take the place of the old Graefe iridectomy.
From Glaucoma A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 by Nance, Willis O.
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.
