noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The surgical procedure for removing a part of the skull, called a bone flap, prior to a treatment. The bone flap is replaced at the end of the operation.
2. 2
   a surgical opening through the skull wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

lobotomy

Etymology

From cranio- + -tomy.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.