Ablation

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /əˈbleɪ.ʃn̩/

Definitions

1. The process of removing or destroying material from a surface, often through melting, vaporization, or erosion
2. surgical extraction or destruction of tissue combined with the gradual loss of material from a surface due to melting, vaporization, or mechanical wear
3. The process in which material is eliminated from a surface by melting, vaporizing, or wearing away ; the medical practice of removing or destroying body tissue through surgery or other procedures

Etymology: "Ablation" carries a bit of a double life. Its core sense is simply removal, but it has been used in medicine, geology, and space science, where the same idea of material being stripped away takes on quite different forms. The word arrived in English in the Middle Ages, in the later period of Middle English, borrowed from Late Latin "ablatio," meaning "a taking away." That Latin noun was built from the verb "auferre," "to take away, carry off, withdraw, remove," combined with the common noun-forming suffix "-tio," which gives the English "-tion." The root is a compound of "ab-," "away from," and "ferre," "to carry," so the literal picture is of carrying something off from its place. English also has "ablatio" as a doublet, a form of the same Latin word that entered the language by a different route and kept its Latin shape. The surface resemblance to "ablate" has led people to read the noun as "ablate" plus "-ion." That is a reasonable way to see the word today, since the verb "ablate" was formed from the same underlying Latin base, but the noun came into English from Late Latin rather than being derived from the English verb.

Synonyms: removal, excission, detachment

Antonyms: addition, attachment, joining