noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The surgical removal of a fingernail or toenail.
2. 2
   Surgically remove the distal phalange of each digit of the forefeet of a cat.

   "A good example of the potential discrepancy between human and feline goals is onychectomy, or declawing."

Synonyms

All synonyms

declawing

Example

More examples

"A good example of the potential discrepancy between human and feline goals is onychectomy, or declawing."

Etymology

From onych- (“nail”) + -ectomy.

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