What Does Rhytidectomy Mean?
Cosmetic surgery has a lot of long words for popular procedures. Sometimes the meaning is easy to guess. For example, while you can probably guess that an abdominoplasty has something to do with the abdomen, you might find it harder to guess what rhytidectomy means. It gets even weirder when you find out that the word “rhytidectomy” doesn’t even really describe the surgery.
Where does the word “rhytidectomy” come from? Like many medical terms, it involves two Greek words that have been mashed together to create a new word.
Rhytid…
This comes from the Greek word rhytis, which means “wrinkle.” That’s pretty straightforward. Facelift surgery targets wrinkles on the face. It’s only when you think about the next half of the word “rhytidectomy” that it seems a little odd.
…Ectomy
You’ll often find “ectomy” in the names of different surgeries, including:
- appendectomy: removal of the appendix
- hysterectomy: removal of the uterus
- mastectomy: removal of a breast to remove a malignant tumor
- vasectomy: removal of the vas deferens (sperm ducts)
As you’ve probably noticed, all of these surgeries involve the removal of something. This is because “ectomy” comes from the ancient Greek word ektomia, which means “a cutting out of.”
Rhytidectomy: Cutting Out Wrinkles?
As you can see, rhytidectomy literally translates to “the cutting out of wrinkles.” This is strange, since facelift surgery actually involves removing excess skin, so that wrinkles disappear. A cosmetic surgeon doesn’t actually cut out the wrinkles, but instead removes skin around the borders of the face so that it can be pulled tighter.
That might explain why another word for facelift surgery is rhytidoplasty. The latter half of this word comes from the Greek plassein, which means “to mold.” In many ways, this word is more accurate, since a cosmetic surgeon molds the face’s appearance.
