cashectomy

C3A1S1H4E1C3T1O1M3Y4

noun

The removal of all of a person's money, usually by voluntary means.

Scrabble 22

Meanings

nouncashectomy (plural cashectomies)

plural cashectomies

  1. humorousslangThe removal of all of a person's money, usually by voluntary means.

    Their first obligation is to sell you — to perform a cashectomy.

    1984, Jeff Slutsky, Woody Woodruff, Streetfighting, →ISBN, page 154
    2 more examples

    We've every facility here for dealing with people who are rich. We can deal with a blocked purse, we can drain private accounts and in the worst cases we can perform a total cashectomy, which is total removal of all moneys from the patient.

    1970 December 22, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Episode Twenty-six

    If print wants to perform a cashectomy on users, it should probably look to what happened with music, an industry in which people once paid handsomely for records, then tapes, then CDs, that was overtaken by the expectation that the same product should be free.

    2009 January 12, David Carr, “Let’s Invent an iTunes for News”, in New York Times

Origin

  1. Englishcash
  2. Ancient Greekἐκ (ek)
  3. Ancient Greekἐκ- (ek-)
  4. Proto-Indo-European*temh₁-
  5. Ancient Greekτέμνω (témnō)
  6. Ancient Greekἐκτέμνω (ektémnō)
  7. Ancient Greekἐκτομή (ektomḗ)
  8. Englishcashectomy

From cash + -ectomy.

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Rhymes with cashectomy

All rhymes →
Cite this entry
APA

cashectomy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cashectomy

MLA

“cashectomy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cashectomy. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cashectomy,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cashectomy.

Source: cashectomy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.