triage

American  

[tree-ahzh] / triˈɑʒ /

noun

• triages
  plural

1. the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors.

2. the determination of priorities for action.

   She began her workday with a triage of emails.

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adjective

1. of, relating to, or performing the task of triage.

   a triage officer.

verb (used with object)

triaged, triaging

1. to act on or in by triage.

   to triage a crisis.

triage British  

/ ˌtriːˈɑːʒ, ˈtriːˌɑːʒ, ˈtraɪ- /

noun

1. (in a hospital) the principle or practice of sorting emergency patients into categories of priority for treatment

2. the principle or practice of sorting casualties in battle or disaster into categories of priority for treatment

3. the principle or practice of allocating limited resources, as of food or foreign aid, on a basis of expediency rather than according to moral principles or the needs of the recipients

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• triages
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of triage

First recorded in 1925–30; from French: “a sorting,” from tri(er) “to sort” ( cf. try) + -age -age

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Explanation

Grouping patients based on the severity of their injuries and the likelihood of their survival is called triage. In a triage situation, urgent cases are seen by doctors first, and non-life-threatening emergencies go last. You can also apply the sorting and prioritizing of triage to more general situations. If you're overwhelmed with homework, you can perform triage by organizing it into subjects and prioritizing assignments based on their due dates. The word triage comes from the French word trier meaning to sort. Although the medical sense is now the most common, it wasn't used that way until World War One.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

triage triages triaged triaging

AI is increasingly absorbing repetitive, lower-level tasks such as alert triage, log review and data enrichment.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026

The Los Angeles water system is so old — and money for replacements is exceedingly scarce — that officials are left playing a dangerous game of triage.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 25, 2026

He then explained that by swiping left, calls are placed in the stack requiring further triage by a nurse or paramedic, but a swipe right means they're in the wait for an ambulance.

From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026

It added that the prolonged failure to triage referrals properly created a clear risk that urgent cases, including cancer cases, would not be identified or escalated in time.

From BBC ● Jun. 24, 2026

My mom was there in triage on a gurney.

From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah

The company developed a metric called “Mean Time to Adapt,” which measures how quickly an organization identifies, triages and fixes vulnerabilities once discovered.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 10, 2026

The team preps trees when possible ahead of advancing flames and triages those that have faced the fire.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2021

For every patient that telemedicine triages, avoiding the need for an in-person appointment, another slot is opened up for someone who may have needed it more.

From Slate ● Mar. 17, 2020

“Hope has sustained communities, very much like Thousand Oaks, through the exact same triages of mass shootings,” said Andy Fox, the city’s outgoing mayor.

From Washington Times ● Nov. 9, 2018

In the months following the shooting, university counselors provided more than 700 mental health triages, spoke to classes, visited survivors in the hospital, fielded 120 calls from parents and provided other services.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 13, 2012

All the assessment bays where patients are triaged on arrival fill up quickly and are in constant use for the next five hours.

From BBC ● Feb. 14, 2025

If the animal can be triaged nearby and stabilized, Rulli said, rescuers try to transport them to the institute’s hospital in Sausalito.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 2, 2024

Diaz acknowledged the shift will mean it will take longer to investigate property crimes like car prowls and burglaries and cases will need to be triaged.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 16, 2023

"This is the only hospital still accepting injured and we're getting more every day. Some go into surgery, others get triaged, but the capacity is very low," he said.

From Reuters ● Apr. 19, 2023

Many were triaged in the war zone and then treated at a military medical facility in Landstuhl, Germany, before being flown to the United States.

From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama

They found that DeepSeek handled these tasks as well as Anthropic’s Sonnet and was good at email triaging in particular.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

“We recognized that we were triaging problems and just finding short-term solutions,” said Barberini.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 25, 2025

Stopping at the "twisted" frame of his bike to grab some medical supplies, Mr Vernon began triaging the stricken fans in the road, including some still trapped under the Ford Galaxy.

From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2025

They say state-of-the-art large language models like GPT-4 could be useful for providing eye-related advice, diagnosis, and management suggestions in well-controlled contexts, like triaging patients, or where access to specialist healthcare professionals is limited.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 17, 2024

The lightness he'd felt fled him, and he began the rotten business of triaging his in-box.

From Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow

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