pre-operationn.adj.
/ˌpriːɒpəˈreɪʃn/, U.S. /ˈˌpriˌɑpəˈreɪʃ(ə)n/ A. n.† 1. The action of operation or working in advance; an instance of this. Obsolete.
ΚΠ
a1631 J. Donne Serm. (1959) IV. 224 So there is a good sense of co-operation, and post-operation, but præoperation, that we should work, before God work upon us, can admit no good interpretation.
1655 in E. Nicholas Nicholas Papers (1892) II. 248 He reasons that such a determinacion could not be grounded on what the former printes spake, and accordingly he makes pre-operation.
1707 J. Hussey God's Operations Grace xii. 395 They first discern'd, I say, a Pre-Operation of the Spirit.
a1779 W. Warburton Divine Legation Moses (new ed.) ix. i, in Wks. (1788) IV. 122 It would be trifling to speak of a pre-ordination, which was not to be understood of a pre-operation.
2. Psychology. In Piaget's theory: an activity characteristic of the preoperational stage of a child's cognitive development, being intuitive rather than logical in nature.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > psychology > developmental psychology > logical mental activity > [noun] > pre-operational activity
pre-operation1962
1962 Child Devel. 33 619 Piaget calls perceptual operations ‘preoperations’ because even in the adult perceptual operations are never completely reversible.
1971 Nature 13 Aug. 456/1 For some time, it has been believed that young children are unable to form transitive inferences about quantity until they pass the stage of logical preoperations at about 7 yr old.
1997 German Q. 70 259/2 Children at six to nine or at the stage of preoperations cannot perform mental operations which are matters of course to the adult mind.
B. adj.
Occurring or existing before an operation; (Medicine) = preoperative adj.
ΘΚΠ
the world > health and disease > healing > medical treatment > surgery > [adjective] > relating to operation > before operation
preoperative1886
pre-op1914
pre-operation1928
1928 Biol. Bull. 55 350 The patient..feels that he can climb a stairs [sic] two steps at a time instead of the..pre-operative one step.
1935 Lancet 27 Apr. 989/1 The individualisation [of treatment] was a matter of great importance and was carried out by careful pre-operation diagnosis.
1957 Econ. Jrnl. 67 633 In the final equilibrium L2 will lie to the left of its pre-operation position, owing to leftward movements during the inflation.
1976 J. Snow Cricket Rebel 107 I relaxed as the pre-operation drugs took effect and I moved into another world.
1993 Neurosurg. Rev. 16 121 Preoperation CT scans cannot establish exactly the presence and eventual thickness of the capsula.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2007; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.a1631