Orthosurgery

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A surgical specialty aimed at rectifying deformities in bones and joints An area of medical practice that specializes in the surgical enhancement of skeletal function and form A field where surgical techniques are applied to correct and improve skeletal abnormalities
2. A branch of surgery focusing on correcting irregularities in the bones and joints through operative procedures
3. A medical discipline that involves performing operations to fix or improve the structure and function of the skeletal system

Etymology: Orthosurgery is a compound built from two parts. The first, "ortho-", comes from Greek "orthos", meaning straight or correct, and it appears in English words like orthodontics and orthopaedics. The second part is "surgery", which comes from Latin "chirurgia", a word that originally referred to hand work, from Greek "kheirourgia", literally "handwork". So the term joins a root meaning "straight" to one meaning "hand operation". The combination reflects a shift in what the older root "ortho-" was used to describe. In orthopaedics, the idea of correcting or straightening the body came to cover surgery on bones and joints, and orthosurgery follows the same pattern, applying the prefix to surgical work on the skeletal system. Because the word is a modern formation from familiar parts, its meaning can be read directly from its pieces: a surgical procedure on bone and joint structures.