Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To burn or sear with a cautery.
- v. To deaden, as to feelings or moral scruples; callous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To burn or sear with fire or a hot iron, or with caustics, as morbid flesh.
- To sear, in a figurative sense.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To burn or sear with a cautery or caustic.
- v. To sear, as the conscience.
WordNet 3.0
- v. burn, sear, or freeze (tissue) using a hot iron or electric current or a caustic agent
- v. make insensitive or callous; deaden feelings or morals
Etymologies
- Middle English cauterizen, from Late Latin cautērizāre, to cauterize, brand, from Latin cautērium, cautery; see cautery.
Examples
“Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to "cauterize" the records of potentially embarrassing information.”
“Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to 'cauterize' the records of potentially embarrassing information.”
“He was using it to cauterize little capillaries that were sprouting in the inner chest.”
“For though I may have been able to cheat it, in the end the comfort gained could well cauterize the wound of love, and limp the iron endurance required of a courier.”
“We must get stuff out into the open, tear the scab off this wound, apply a stinging astringent to it, and cauterize it with a blowtorch.”
The Huffington Post: Silpa Kovvali: Tiger Brother: An Interview With Wesley Yang
“The rain cannot cauterize the burning, the flames that engulf my skin.”
“Like a knife slash, we can cauterize and stitch up the cut, stopping the bleeding -- but we still have to wait to find out just how deep and lasting the scar that forms will be.”
The Huffington Post: Daniel Dicker: Economic Wounds of the Debt Debate Won't Heal Quickly
“By doing this, we cauterize ourselves from the full range of what it means to be human, effectively castrated from all but the most superficial feelings.”
“By cauterizing the public access to signature signers he will turn around and cauterize the ballot process from being used as weapons against groups of people.”
“It uses ultrasound to detect internal injuries such as torn arteries (by spotting the flow of blood), then focuses much more powerful beams of ultrasound onto the injured tissue to cook it (oh, all right, “cauterize” it), sealing the tear.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cauterize’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Gristle and Flesh
Words that taste of violence, trauma, blood and brain, gore-some and slippery with vitreous humours. Lovely words, some of them! And the loveliest thing is how many of them are so *effective*, ma...
abattoir, gristle, viscous, eviscerate, ravage, carnage, gouge, claret, slaughterous, sanguinary, laniate, defenestrate and 11 more...
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