amputate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin amputātus, the past participle of amputō (“to cut off (a branch or part of the body), to prune”),^[2][3][4][5] which is formed from am- (“about, around”), a shortened form of ambi-, and putō (“to prune, lop”).^[2][6][7][4] Etymonline traces the two parts to Proto-Indo-European *ambhi- (“around”) and *pau- (“to cut, strike, stamp”).^[8][6] Barnhart and Etymonline, who date the verb to the 1630s, allow that it may be a back-formation from amputation, which Barnhart finds in Cotgrave's dictionary of 1611;^[5][8] the revised OED takes it directly from the Latin stem and dates it about a century earlier.^[2] The OED compares Middle French amputer, used figuratively before 1465, of pruning a tree in 1519 and in medicine about 1572, in Paré, and amputar from the early 15th century.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

To remove by cutting, to lop off: about 1540, in J. Drummond's translation of Arnaldus de Villa Nova.^[2] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English also date the word to the mid 16th century;^[9][10] Merriam-Webster gives 1612, and Barnhart 1638.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

Weekley called the word a metaphor from gardening.^[11] The Latin verb applied both to branches and to parts of the body,^[2] and in English it was at first used of plants and of people alike.^[8] The surgical sense is recorded from 1563, in T. Gale's Certaine Workes of Chirurgerie.^[2] By 1755 Johnson could describe the verb as "a word used only in chirurgery",^[12] and the Shorter Oxford notes that the general sense of cutting off or pruning is obsolete, except as a figurative use of the surgical one.^[9] Merriam-Webster quotes such figurative uses, with data and a dimension of political existence as what is cut away.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1540 – to remove by cutting, to lop off.^[2]
• 1563 – to cut off a limb or other part of the body in surgery.^[2]
• 1611 – the noun amputation, in Cotgrave.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cut off a limb or other part of the body in a surgical operation: The doctors had to amputate two of the climber's frostbitten toes.^[13][3][2]
2. To cut or lop something off; figuratively, to remove a part of something as if by surgery: The editor amputated the last chapter of the memoir.^[3][2][9]

Word family

• amputation
• amputator
• amputative

Related words

• amputee
• putative
• pave

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins