Mammaplasty

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Surgical alteration of the breast, typically to change its size or shape, often performed for cosmetic or reconstructive reasons
2. A plastic surgery procedure that reshapes or resizes the breasts to achieve a desired appearance or to restore form after illness
3. The operation of modifying breast tissue surgically, commonly done to enlarge, reduce, or reconstruct the breasts

Etymology: Mammaplasty is a compound built from two pieces, and the second one is the more interesting. "Mamma" is the Latin word for breast, the same root behind "mammal", which is why the word for a class of animals named for mammary glands shares its origin with this surgical term. The "-plasty" half is a suffix meaning surgical reshaping or repair, the same element found in words like "rhinoplasty" for nose surgery. That suffix has a surprisingly ancient ancestor. It comes from the Greek verb "plassein", meaning to mould or shape, as a potter shapes clay. Greek surgeons and writers used forms built on this stem to describe the moulding of living tissue, and the sense carried into the medical vocabulary of Europe and then English, where it became a productive ending for named operations. Because it is a modern formation, mammaplasty belongs to the period when surgeons began coining precise names for specific procedures, rather than describing them in longer phrases. The word is a technical coinage: Latin for the body part, Greek for the act of reshaping it.

Synonyms: mammoplasty