écrasement

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French écrasement (“crushing”).

Noun

écrasement (countable and uncountable, plural écrasements)

1. (surgery) The operation of removing a part, as a tumor, by a wire or chain loop gradually tightened so as to cut slowly through its attachment.
   • 1871, James Marion Sims, Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery, § II., page #92:

     Her physicians consented to its écrasement, which occupied ten or twelve minutes.

References

• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “écrasement”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

French

Etymology

From écraser (“to crush; to crash”) +‎ -ment.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /e.kʁaz.mɑ̃/

Noun

écrasement m (plural écrasements)

1. crushing
2. crash (of an airplane)
3. (computing) overwrite mode

Further reading

• “écrasement”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.