| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| trephine |
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| SYLLABICATION: | tre·phine |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  tr -f n |
| NOUN: | A surgical instrument having circular, sawlike edges, used to cut out disks of bone, usually from the skull. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: tre·phined, tre·phin·ing, tre·phines
To operate on with a trephine. | | ETYMOLOGY: | French tréphine, from obsolete English trefine, from Latin tr s fns, three ends : trs, three; see trei- in Appendix I + fns, pl. of fnis, end. | | OTHER FORMS: | treph i·nation (tr f -n shn) —NOUN
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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