If an operator operates, why doesn’t a surgeon surge? The word surgeon comes from ancient Greek cheir, which means “hand,” and ergon, “work,” surgery being a kind of medical treatment done by hand, rather than the work of drugs. These Greek roots are more obvious in the archaic English word for “surgeon,” chirurgeon. The word operate comes from the Latin word for “work,” the same root of opera, literally “a work,” and modus operandi, literally “mode of working.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why Doesn’t a Surgeon Surge?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is STD Noor calling from lovely Madison, Wisconsin.
Welcome to the show. How can we help?
Thank you.
Well, I had a surgery a few weeks ago, and before the surgery I found myself sitting and thinking about my surgeon and hoping that he is the best and that he would do a great job on me.
And then my mind went to the fact that he is a surgeon, and yet he wasn’t going to surge me or surge on me.
He was going to operate on me, and yet he’s not an operator.
He is a surgeon.
And try as I might, I really couldn’t find connection between these two verbs or two words and makes no sense really that the surgeon will be operating.
So my mind, of course, went to you guys and hopefully you can explain it.
Well, we’d be glad to try.
Surgeon is a really interesting word because it comes to us via French, and it goes all the way back to two Greek words that literally mean just handwork.
Isn’t that interesting?
It’s just simply somebody who does handwork, and it happens to be medical.
And the Greek word for hand is hair, which was borrowed into English in an older word for surgeon that you sometimes see in old books, and it’s spelled C-H-I-U-R-G-E-O-N.
Through the influence of French, we ended up with the word as surgeon, and it literally means handwork, and the E-R in there from the Greek word ergon, which means work, is related to a whole slew of other words in English like ergonomic, which is, you know, what you want when you want your work to be lined up correctly so that you don’t get hurt.
Or synergy, which is energy together, working together.
It’s also related to the word George.
The name George.
The name George, which comes from the Greek word for farmer.
It’s a geo worker, George.
So they all are connected to this word surgeon.
And the word surgeon used to mean just a plain old doctor.
You know, the surgeon general that we have today isn’t necessarily a surgeon.
He doesn’t cut anything.
So why do they operate on you and not surge on you?
Well, that’s interesting.
I mean, that’s from the Latin for work.
But the surgeon is specifically handwork.
So we didn’t backform the verb from the noun, right?
Right.
Yeah, we didn’t need to do that.
We already had the operate verb.
Yeah.
So what you’re saying is that the verb operate existed before surgeon became surgeon?
Yeah, well, the operate verb, yeah, it did already exist, and it’s kind of a general purpose verb that kind of just we operate on many things.
We operate machinery.
We operate business.
Yeah.
So it’s just kind of general purpose verb.
Yeah, and they just arose independently of each other.
I mean, an opera is a work by a composer, or your modus operandi, your MO, is your method of working.
So they sort of have the same idea, but they grew up completely independently of each other.
Well, okay.
Thank you for the explanation to the degree that it explained, actually.
Thank you very much, Esty.
Take care now.
It’s a great question.
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
