Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Laparotomy
/ˌlæpəˈrɒtəmi/noun
A surgical incision through the abdominal wall to open the abdominal cavity.
The Greek roots
λαπάρα
lapára
flank, soft side
τομή
tomḗ
a cutting
Literally: “a cutting of the flank”
The story of the word
λαπάρα is precise Greek for the soft part between the ribs and the hip, the place a spear goes in. Nineteenth-century surgeons borrowed it for abdominal surgery and then quietly widened the meaning, so a modern laparotomy is usually a midline incision nowhere near the flank. Laparoscopy inherited the same misplaced root, which is why keyhole surgery is named after a body part it does not touch.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → medical coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
laparoscopyanatomylobotomyepitome
In a sentence
The bleeding would not settle, so they took him for an emergency laparotomy.
Recovery from open laparotomy takes far longer than from the keyhole approach.