trepanation

/tɹɛpəˈneɪʃən/

trepanation means the practice of drilling a hole in the skull as a physical, mental, or spiritual treatment. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.

trepanation is pronounced /tɹɛpəˈneɪʃən/.

Why “trepanation” is a great word

TREPANATION — [Noun] The surgical practice of drilling or scraping a hole into the human skull, historically used as a medical or spiritual treatment. From New Latin trepanatio, formed from French trépan (“a drill”), from Latin trepanum, from Ancient Greek τρύπανον (trúpanon, “an auger, a drill”). First attested in Middle English around 1400. Unlike “craniotomy,” which denotes a broad, modern surgical opening, or “trephination,” which can specify the use of a crown saw, trepanation is the primordial act of perforation. It is the flint-scraped groove in an ancient Peruvian cranium, the desperate eighteenth-century bore for a subduing migraine, and the dark disc of bone lifted like a sacred coin from the temple—a stark ledger of humanity’s enduring conviction that salvation lies just on the other side of bone.

Etymology

From New Latin trepanatio, formed from French trépan (“a drill”), itself from Latin trepanum, ultimately from Ancient Greek τρύπανον (trúpanon, “an auger, a drill”).

noun

The practice of drilling a hole in the skull as a physical, mental, or spiritual treatment.“Creed had suffered […] a swelling to the brain that the tribe’s chief physic treated with trepanation.”