trephine

Borrowed from French tréphine, from Latin trepanum, from Ancient Greek τρύπανον (trúpanon, “auger, borer”). Doublet of trepan.

• IPA^(key): /tɹɪˈfaɪn/

trephine (plural trephines)

1. (medicine) A surgical instrument with a cylindrical blade used to remove a circular section of tissue, f.e. bone or cornea; a trepan.

   They removed a core of bone as well as took a bone marrow aspirate from my right hip using a trephine to exclude me having a blood cancer, causing a blood- and serum-stained shirt, a whopping hematoma and a great deal of mental anguish and physical pain in the process!

• trepan (obsolete)

trephine (third-person singular simple present trephines, present participle trephining, simple past and past participle trephined)

1. (intransitive) To use a trephine during surgery.
   • 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 21, in Dracula:

     "We shall wait," said Van Helsing, "just long enough to fix the best spot for trephining, so that we may most quickly and perfectly remove the blood clot, for it is evident that the haemorrhage is increasing."

2. (transitive) To perforate with a trephine.

• nephrite, prehnite, repineth, ripeneth