Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 October 25
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October 25
[edit]chirurgery vs chirugery
[edit]Strangely, the latter shows up many results from Indian contexts. Universities are giving degrees in this supposed area of medical science. Any idea how the former can have such a variant for this particular region? --14.139.185.2 (talk) 11:40, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
- Mirriam-Webster gives the first as an archaic spelling of surgery, but has no definition for the second one. --Jayron32 11:53, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
- In many countries. including England and India, a first medical degree is Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery - or in Latin, Medicinae Baccalaureus, Baccalaureus Chirurgiae. From that it is clear that the second R is the correct spelling. Both "chirurgy" and "chirurgery" have been used as alternative words for surgery, but both forms are now archaic. If they are being used in academic contexts it is nothing more than a desire to make the course sound more traditional that would be implied by surgery. Unfortunately, "chirugery" is just an error - which may well have been propagated by imitation. Wymspen (talk) 13:35, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
- irrelevant posting by banned user removed –Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:17, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
- How does that explain dropping the second R? CodeTalker (talk) 20:26, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
- Dropping duplicate second consonants or syllables is known as haplology, or jokingly as haplogy. It's a not uncommon phenomenon. μηδείς (talk) 21:53, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
- Ultimately from Ancient Greek χειρουργία, from χείρ (“hand”) + ἔργον (“work”). —Stephen (talk) 03:34, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
- surgery itself is produced from chirurgery by means of dropping the 1st r, in French, before being borrowed by the English. --2A02:C7D:8E27:300:283E:8C89:ED74:36D (talk) 21:47, 28 October 2016 (UTC)