Etymology

bdellatomy

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Today it means: The snipping off the tail of a leech engaged in sucking human blood, in order to let the blood run out of it and so increase its powers of drawing blood. Full definition →

Ancient Greek βδέλλᾰ
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The story

  1. Ancient Greek · derived fromβδέλλᾰ“leech”
  2. English todaybdellatomy

Irregularly formed as Ancient Greek βδέλλᾰ (bdéllă, “leech”) + -tomy (from -τομία (-tomía, “a cutting”); from τέμνω (témnō, “I cut”); the etymological spelling is bdellotomy.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.