Word.ws English Dictionary

lobotomy

Syllables: lob·o·tomy/ləˈbɒtəmi//ləˈbɑtəmi/

lobotomy noun: a surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically (neurosurgery), a procedure, now largely disused, involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and the thalamic region of the frontal lobe of the brain to treat certain mental illnesses.

lobotomy: a surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically (neurosurgery), a...
Image: Frank Gaillard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

lobotomy (plural lobotomies)

  1. (historical) A surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically (neurosurgery), a procedure, now largely disused, involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and the thalamic region of the frontal lobe of the brain to treat certain mental illnesses.
    • Old psychiatric hospitals are even more frightening. They existed at a time in history when shock therapy, brain tissue manipulation, implants, drug experimentation and lobotomies were treatments de jour.2007 April, Julie Albrecht Royce, “Ghosts and Monsters of Lake Michigan—Haunting and Stalking the Sunset Coast”, in Traveling Michigan’s Sunset Coast: Exploring Michigan’s West Coat Beach Towns from...
    Synonyms:
    leucotomy
    1. (historical) An operation involving the severing of the sympathetic nerve trunk.
  2. (figuratively) An act of removing or separating, and often disregarding or forgetting, something.
    • As [Anthony] Magistrale has noted, evil in the fiction of Stephen King "can establish dominion only at the expense of the individual's moral conscience". Yet this conscience is a deep part of the soul; to silence it, characters must perform a kind of moral lobotomy, excising the best parts of...1992, Bernadette Lynn Bosky, “Choice, Sacrifice, Destiny, and Nature in The Stand”, in Anthony Magistrale, editor, A Casebook on The Stand (Studies in Literary Criticism; 38), Mercer Island, Wash....
    • Organisations which set out to treat all individuals as the same, or are 'colour-blind' in their philosophy, could be said to impose a form of cultural lobotomy on their clients, in denying the additional skills, knowledge and experience that they have as members of a minority culture.1998, Frans Meijers, Carrie Piggott, “Careers Guidance and Ethnic Minorities in Holland and Britain: Confronting Fear and Anger”, in Megan Crawford, Richard Edwards, Lesley Kidd, editors, Taking...

lobotomy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Arabic and Malay

lobotomy in Hindi

surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically a procedure involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the frontal lobe of the brain
मस्तिष्कखंडछेदन mastiṣkakhaṇḍchedan

lobotomy in Tamil

மடல் திறப்பு, வளைவெட்டு, லாபாட்டமி

lobotomy in Arabic

surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically a procedure involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the frontal lobe of the brain
جراحة فصية

lobotomy in Malay

surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically a procedure involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the frontal lobe of the brain
lobotomi
More languagesFewer languages
lobotomy in Indonesian
lobotomi
lobotomy in Persian
لوبوتومی
lobotomy in Vietnamese
phẫu thuật thuỳ não

Examples of lobotomy in a sentence

  • Yet this conscience is a deep part of the soul; to silence it, characters must perform a kind of moral lobotomy, excising the best parts of themselves, until what is left becomes less than human.1992, Bernadette Lynn Bosky, “Choice, Sacrifice, Destiny, and Nature in The Stand”, in Anthony Magistrale, editor, A Casebook on The Stand...
  • Put another way, how can we avoid an ethical lobotomy in establishing an organizational perspective?2002 October, Ron Elsdon, “The Central Dilemma”, in Affiliation in the Workplace: Value Creation in the New Organization, Westport, Conn....
  • In the end, as Levinson feared, the price of Charlie being accepted into normative school society is a kind of social lobotomy: he is tamed, so he is not really Charlie anymore.2018 January, David Resnick, “Civic Education”, in Representing Education in Film: How Hollywood Portrays Educational Thought, Settings...

Synonyms of lobotomy

Forms of lobotomy

plurallobotomies

Origin of lobotomy

From lob(e) + -otomy (a variant of -tomy (suffix denoting a surgical incision)).

Words formed from lobotomy

Words that rhyme with lobotomy

Questions about lobotomy

What does lobotomy mean?
Lobotomy means a surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically (neurosurgery), a procedure, now largely disused, involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and the thalamic region of the frontal lobe of the brain to treat certain mental illnesses.
What is lobotomy in Hindi?
Lobotomy in Hindi is मस्तिष्कखंडछेदन (mastiṣkakhaṇḍchedan). See Lobotomy meaning in Hindi.
How do you use lobotomy in a sentence?
Yet this conscience is a deep part of the soul; to silence it, characters must perform a kind of moral lobotomy, excising the best parts of themselves, until what is left becomes less than human.
What part of speech is lobotomy?
Lobotomy is a noun.
How do you pronounce lobotomy?
Lobotomy is pronounced /ləˈbɒtəmi/ (UK).
What is the plural of lobotomy?
The plural of lobotomy is lobotomies.

Words near lobotomy in the dictionary

  1. lobotomized
  2. lobotomizer
  3. lobotomizers
  4. lobotomizes
  5. lobotomizing
  6. lobotomy
  7. lobous
  8. lobs
  9. Lobsang
  10. lobscouce
  11. lobscourse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lobotomy (page history and authors); lobotomy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lobotomy.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-lobotomy.wav.

Cite this entry: “lobotomy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lobotomy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.