Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Mastectomy
/mæˈstɛktəmi/noun
Surgical removal of a breast, usually to treat or prevent cancer.
The Greek roots
μαστός
mastós
breast
ἐκτομή
ektomḗ
a cutting out
Literally: “cutting out the breast”
The story of the word
Greek and Roman surgeons described the operation, but the word is modern, built on μαστός and the -ectomy pattern that swept through nineteenth-century surgical vocabulary. μαστός also named a rounded hill, and Cuvier used it for the mastodon, whose molars carry nipple-shaped cusps. Halsted's radical version, which took muscle and lymph nodes as well, dominated for most of the twentieth century before trial evidence turned against it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
mastitismastodonmastalgiahysterectomy
In a sentence
She chose a double mastectomy after the genetic result came back.
Reconstruction after mastectomy is now planned before the first operation, not after.