Other forms: amputated, amputating, amputates
To amputate is to cut off a limb surgically. Amputate the leg, had to amputate, amputated below the knee.
Where the cut is made decides how well an artificial limb will work afterwards, so the surgeon is planning the rest of the life rather than only ending the damage. Phantom pain in the missing limb is real and common. The Latin means to prune away.
1verbamputateTo cut off a limb surgically.
“Doctors had to amputate his leg below the knee after the accident.”
amputate is an operation.
Latin amputare means to cut away or prune — am-, around, plus putare, to prune.
Proto-Indo-European
*pewH-
Latin
amputō — prune, cut away
English, today
amputate
From Latin amputō (“prune, cut away”). The original sense of pruning (a tree, etc.) became obsolete. The OED considers uses related to anything other than an animal limb to be figurative uses of the modern sense.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA