Word
procedure
Phoneticspro·ce·dure
US/pɹəˈsidʒɝ/
UK/pɹəsˈiːdʒɐ/
Definitions
02a medical operation
n. a medical treatment or operation performed by a doctor or surgeon.
n. a specific surgical or diagnostic intervention performed on a patient.
“The doctor explained that the heart procedure would take about three hours.”
“The surgical team performed a minimally invasive procedure to repair the damaged valve, significantly reducing the patient's recovery time.”
03legal or formal rules
n. the formal rules used in a court of law or a large organization.
n. the body of rules governing the conduct of business in a legislative, judicial, or administrative body.
“The lawyer argued that the police did not follow proper legal procedure during the arrest.”
“Parliamentary procedure dictates that a motion must be seconded before it can be opened for general debate among the members.”
Formal
04computing code
n. a part of a computer program that performs a specific task.
n. a sequence of program instructions that perform a specific task, packaged as a unit.
“The programmer wrote a new procedure to handle the data backup every night.”
“The main program calls a sorting procedure to organize the array before the final results are displayed to the user.”
Technical
Real-World Examples
“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.” “Last year, there were 2.54m animal testing procedures in Britain, down 3.8% on 2024.” Etymology
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.
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englishreference.com/q/procedure