Ablation
//əˈbleɪ.ʃn̩// noun
noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A carrying or taking away; removal. countable, obsolete, uncountable
- 2 surgical removal of a body part or tissue wordnet
- 3 The surgical removal of a body part, an organ, or especially a tumor; the removal of an organ function; amputation. countable, uncountable
- 4 the erosive process that reduces the size of glaciers wordnet
- 5 The progressive removal of material by any of a variety of processes such as melting or vaporization under heat or chipping.; The removal of a glacier by melting and evaporation; the lowering of a land surface by any of several means, as in wind erosion or mass wasting. countable, uncountable
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- 6 The progressive removal of material by any of a variety of processes such as melting or vaporization under heat or chipping.; The depletion of surface snow and ice from a spacecraft or meteorite through melting and evaporation caused by aerodynamic heating. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"The procedure is called catheter ablation because it burns off a small amount of heart muscle."
Etymology
From Late Middle English ablacioun (“removal”), from Late Latin ablātiō (“a taking away”), from auferō (“to take away, carry off, withdraw, remove”) + -tiō (“-tion”, nominal suffix). Doublet of ablatio. Compare French ablation. By surface analysis, ablat(e) + -ion.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.