Other forms: surgeons
A surgeon is a doctor who operates on people — cutting, repairing and closing. Heart surgeon, the surgeon who did the operation, see a surgeon.
British hospitals have a tradition that catches everybody out: surgeons are addressed as Mr, Mrs or Miss rather than Dr, and that is a mark of seniority rather than a demotion. It comes from a time when surgeons trained separately from physicians and were not university-educated. The related words are surgery, which in Britain also means a doctor's consulting room and a politician's session with constituents, and surgical, which describes both instruments and, figuratively, anything precise.
1nounsurgeonA doctor who performs operations.
“The surgeon explained the risks before she signed anything.”
2nounpreciseSomebody who does precise repair work of a similar kind.
“The tree surgeon took the whole crown out in a morning.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
surgeon is a kind of doctor.
Greek kheirourgos meant a hand-worker — kheir, hand, plus ergon, work. That name is exactly the old distinction: physicians thought and prescribed, surgeons worked with their hands, and for centuries the second was the lower trade.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰes-
Ancient Greek
χειρουργός
Latin
chīrūrgia — surgery
Vulgar Latin
*chīrurgiānus
Anglo-Norman
surgien
Middle English
surgien
English, today
surgeon
Built from
From Middle English surgien, borrowed from Anglo-Norman surgien, sirogen (Old French surgien et al.), from Vulgar Latin chīrurgiānus, from Latin chīrūrgia (“surgery”), from chīrurgus (“surgeon”), borrowed from Ancient Greek χειρουργός, from χείρ (“hand”) + ἔργον (“work”). a doublet of chirurgeon.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA