Tonsillotomies

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Surgical operations that cut out the tonsils, the small lymphoid masses at the back of the throat
2. Procedures in which the tonsils are removed from the throat by a surgeon
3. Surgical excisions of the palatine tonsils, usually performed to relieve chronic infection or airway obstruction

Etymology: "Tonsillotomies" is the plural of "tonsillotomy," a noun for the surgical removal of the tonsils. Its parts are simple: "tonsil," the lymphatic tissue at the back of the throat, joined by a connecting vowel to "-otomy," from Ancient Greek "temnein," meaning "to cut." The same "-tomy" ending appears in words like "appendectomy" and "lobotomy," and the "-o-" linking the two halves is the ordinary combining vowel that scientific coinages use between Greek and Latin elements. Because the word is built from classical parts, it was coined in the modern medical period rather than handed down from antiquity. The Greeks and Romans had no surgical term for removing tonsils, so the word belongs to the later vocabulary of English medicine, assembled from older building blocks to name a procedure that needed a precise label.