surgery
noun
Simple meaning
A medical procedure involving an incision with instruments.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
surjereeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɝdʒɚi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
medicineusually uncountable
A medical procedure involving an incision with instruments; performed to repair damage or arrest disease in a living body
medicineusually uncountable
A procedure involving major incisions to remove, repair, or replace a part of a body.
medicine
The medical specialty related to the performance of surgical procedures.
british
A medical practitioner's office hours.
British
A room where a doctor or dentist can be consulted
“He read the warning in the doctor's surgery.”
british
A doctor's office; a clinic.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A medical procedure involving an incision with instruments; performed to repair damage or arrest disease in a living body
Used this way, surgery is a specialist word with a clearly unfavourable pull. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Nearby words
- operating theater , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use surgery
- “He is professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
A medical procedure involving an incision with instruments.
A room in a hospital used for performing surgical operations.
A room in a hospital used for performing surgery (originally designed for operations in front of observers).
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Plastic surgery to remove wrinkles and other signs of aging from your face.
An eye operation that treats glaucoma by destroying the ciliary body with a laser.
The branch of dentistry involving surgical procedures.
A doctor's degree in dental surgery.
Cataract surgery in which only the front of the lens is removed.
Any surgical procedure involving the eyes.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Microsurgery in which the surgeon performs surgery by manipulating the hands of a robot.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- dermatologynoun
- cardiologynoun
- neurologynoun
- ophthalmologynoun
- radiologynoun
- surgicaladjective
- gynecologynoun
- dentistrynoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.