procedure
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
a medical treatment or operation performed by a doctor or surgeon.
a specific surgical or diagnostic intervention performed on a patient.
Simple“The doctor explained that the heart procedure would take about three hours.”
In context“The surgical team performed a minimally invasive procedure to repair the damaged valve, significantly reducing the patient's recovery time.”
- 02 C1 Advanced
the formal rules used in a court of law or a large organization.
the body of rules governing the conduct of business in a legislative, judicial, or administrative body.
Simple“The lawyer argued that the police did not follow proper legal procedure during the arrest.”
In context“Parliamentary procedure dictates that a motion must be seconded before it can be opened for general debate among the members.”
- 03 C1 Advanced
a part of a computer program that performs a specific task.
a sequence of program instructions that perform a specific task, packaged as a unit.
Simple“The programmer wrote a new procedure to handle the data backup every night.”
In context“The main program calls a sorting procedure to organize the array before the final results are displayed to the user.”
Usage active procedure · actual procedure · alternative procedure
“Hussain trained as a doctor before moving into cosmetic procedures, but penis fillers do not legally require any medical training to perform.”
“The shots were for the second round of freezing her eggs, a medical procedure that can give women more time to have children.”
From French procédure, from Old French, from Latin procedere (“to go forward, proceed”); see proceed.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.