triage means assessment or sorting according to quality, need, etc., especially to determine how resources will be allocated. It carries an Arena rating of 1504, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, triage ranks #200 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #360 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #520 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #2,477 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words.
triage is pronounced /ˈtɹiː.ɑːʒ/.
Why “triage” is a great word
The systematic sorting of people or things, especially the wounded or ill, to determine the order of priority for treatment when resources are insufficient. From French triage ("a sorting"), from trier ("to sort, pick, cull"), of uncertain origin, possibly from a Gallo-Roman or Germanic source related to picking or selecting. Unlike "prioritization," which can be a leisurely ranking of importance, or "classification," a neutral act of organizing by kind, triage is a taxonomy of urgency forged under duress. It is the battlefield medic scanning for the telltale rise of a chest, the color-coded tags snapping onto wrists after a derailment, and the exhausted doctor making the calculus for the last ventilator. It is the moment when order must be carved from catastrophe, and care becomes a series of necessary abandonments, each choice a small grief folded into duty.
Etymology
Borrowed from French triage, from trier (“to sort”).
noun
- Assessment or sorting according to quality, need, etc., especially to determine how resources will be allocated.
- The process of sorting patients so as to determine the order in which they will be treated (for example, by assigning precedence according to the urgency of illness or injury).
- A facility within a hospital that screens walk-in patients and determines which department or clinic to send them to. (See also triage center.)e.g.“I knew where most of the medical supplies were kept. I went to triage. The room was chaos.” — 2013 11, John Macdonald, Question Authority, Balboa Press, →ISBN, page 170:
- The process of prioritizing bugs to be fixed.
- That which is picked out, especially broken coffee beans.
- A marshalling yard, classification yard.
verb
- To subject to triage; to prioritize.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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