triagen.
/ˈtriːɑːʒ/, /ˈtrʌɪɑːʒ/, /ˈtriːɪdʒ/, /ˈtrʌɪɪdʒ/, U.S. /ˈtriɑʒ/, /ˌtriˈɑʒ/ 1. † a. The action or process of classifying, sorting, or separating out wool or another commodity according to quality. Obsolete.
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1728 E. Chambers Cycl. at Wool Each Fleece consists of Wool of divers Qualities and Degrees of Fineness, which the Dealers therein take care to separate... If the Triage or Separation be well made, in fifteen Bales there will be twelve mark'd R, that is, Refine or Prime.
1829 Amer. Farmer 16 Oct. 242/1 The classification of fleeces, and the triage or picking in the greasy state.
1851 Farmer's Mag. July 68/2 In the case of the premiers crus, much pains are taken in the triage, or picking out of the grapes in full condition—the unripe and the over-ripe and mouldy fruit being alike left for the manufacture of an inferior class of wine.
1873 Bull. National Assoc. Wool Manufacturers 4 369 The measures taken by the Chamber of Commerce to persuade the Chinese to improve the filature and picking (triage) of their silk, in 1872, have done no good.
b. Coffee or (less commonly) another commodity classified or separated as being of a poor or inferior quality.Cf. slightly earlier Compounds 1.
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the world > food and drink > drink > coffee manufacture > [noun] > coffee-bean > poor-quality or defective
triage1820
Quaker1894
1820 J. Crawfurd Hist. Indian Archipel. III. 374 Inferior Java coffee, Triage, as it is called in commercial language.
1892 Bull. Misc. Information (Royal Gardens, Kew) No. 63. 75 His Excellency has directed that a quantity be dried and cured at Hope and sent to the London markets to compete with the ordinary triage produced by the peasantry by the rule of thumb methods, which at present characterise the manipulation of the [cocoa] bean in the country.
1929 H. A. A. Nicholls & J. H. Holland Text-bk. Trop. Agric. (ed. 2) ii. ii. 138 (caption) A simple machine with a single cylinder having various sections wound by wire, which divides the coffee into its different classes—flat beans, ‘peaberry’, ‘elephant’ and ‘triage’ (or broken).
2001 B. Geddes World Food: Caribbean 99 Once dried, the [coffee] beans are then separated according to size into five categories: #1, #B1, #2, #3 and Triage.
2.
a. Medicine. The action or process of making a preliminary assessment of patients (originally military casualties) in order to determine the urgency of their need for treatment and the nature of treatment required. Also (and in earliest use): a medical unit, originally one attached to a military force, that performs such assessment (now somewhat rare); an area of a hospital where this performed.Esp. in military contexts, often used with the implication of prioritizing the treatment of casualties who would not survive without it, as contrasted with those who would not survive despite receiving it and those who would survive without it.
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the world > health and disease > healing > diagnosis or prognosis > [noun] > assignment of degrees of urgency
triage1915
triaging1919
1915 T. J. Putnam Diary 27 Dec. in M. A. de W. Howe Harvard Volunteers Europe (1916) 131 The triage has been transferred from Moosch to Willer.
1922 Mil. Surgeon 51 215 The evacuation hospitals were pushed closer up to the front line, and eventually centres of triage, for sorting out the wounded, were improvised.
1976 Lancet 15 Nov. 1061/1 Triage at an early stage can label the patient with coma as surgical or medical.
2013 Daily Tel. 31 July 19/1 Take the 111 [telephone] service. The basic idea—of remote triage to ease the pressure on A&E departments and channel patients where most appropriate—is a good one.
b. More generally: the action or process of determining the most urgent, important, etc., people or things out of a number requiring attention; prioritization.Recorded earliest as a modifier. See also Compounds 2.
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the mind > attention and judgement > importance > [noun] > assigning degrees of importance
triage1960
the mind > attention and judgement > discovery > comparison > [noun] > priority based on
triage1960
1960 Ann. Amer. Acad. Polit. & Social Sci. 328 213/2 A triage criterion for theories is valuable when confronting a genuine ideology—any ideology.
1974 Time 11 Nov. 80 In the West, there is increasing talk of triage, a commonsense if callous concept that teaches that when resources are scarce, they must be used where they will do most good.
1994 Mod. Maturity July 30/2 FEMA..set up in Northridge within hours of the giant quake, registering victims and doing its own form of triage—handing out cash to those in immediate need of food and shelter, forms to the rest.
2017 N.Z. Herald (Nexis) 30 Nov. (Technol. section) Part of his daily job at the company included the triage of customer complaints.
Compounds
C1. As a modifier, designating coffee classified or separated as being of a poor or inferior quality, esp. as triage coffee.
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1780 Let. 27 Nov. in Helvetia: App. Appellant's 1st & 2nd Appeals: Claim E. P. Bize 1782 (?1790) 37 Triage coffee is an excellent article for your government.
1825 Gentleman's Mag. Mar. 216/1 These [pickers] sort the [Coffee] berries into three classes; ‘best quality’, ‘middling’, and the third of all the bad broken berries..is called ‘triage coffee’.
1879 Internat. Exhib. Sydney: Rep. & Catal. Exhibits Ceylon 13 One keg of triage Coffee, being the defective beans picked out of No. 1, 2, and 3 sizes, and from the peaberry after they have been sized.
2001 Financial Times 17 July 34/3 The cereal mix, which contains triage beans, is far more popular than its export quality blend.
C2. General use as a modifier (in senses 2a, 2b), as triage nurse, triage system, etc.
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1919 'Tenshun, 21! (Gen. Hospital No. 21, Denver, Colorado) 24 July 4/3 Attached are notes of the situation as I had it in memoranda from the chief surgeon and the triage officer.
1975 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 3 Nov. 7/2 The triage discussions now seek to classify nations into those what do not need help, those that are capable of responding to help and those ‘broken back’ states that are in such difficulty that they cannot be helped.
1979 Guardian 18 Oct. 5/8 There is [sc. in New York] an unofficial ‘triage’ system in which teachers and school administrators concentrate their limited resources on helping those students who seem to be capable of succeeding.
2013 M. Lawson Deaths ii. 59 An incoming call, considered significant enough by the triage nurse on switchboard to be put through to her.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2020; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
triagev.
/ˈtriːɑːʒ/, /ˈtrʌɪɑːʒ/, /ˈtriːɪdʒ/, /ˈtrʌɪɪdʒ/, U.S. /ˈtriɑʒ/, /ˌtriˈɑʒ/ΚΠ
1747 J. Smith tr. P. L. Savary in Chronicon Rusticum-commerciale II. cli. 411 When the Wool has been triaged [Fr. triées], then it is sold only by Weight.
1750 W. Temple Refut. Smith's Mem. Wool 13 It was an easy Matter by Analogy to have formed a Judgment of the Prices these Wools bore in Relation to each other, as well as to have perceived that our Wools used to be triaged before manufactured.
2.
a. transitive. Medicine. To perform a preliminary assessment of (a patient) in order to determine the nature and degree of urgency of treatment required. Cf. triage n. 2a.Sometimes used with the negative implication of withholding treatment from a patient, esp. one who is considered unlikely to benefit from it. Cf. to triage out 1 at Phrasal verbs.
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the world > health and disease > healing > diagnosis or prognosis > diagnose or prognose [verb (transitive)] > assign degree of urgency
triage1919
1919 Trans. Congr. Amer. Physicians & Surgeons: 11th Sess. 34 Although it seemed an easy matter to have all wounded men wearing head bandages triaged to one point, since this point was farther away than the main hospital centers, the cases were almost certain to be dropped at these centers.
1962 Sanitarian's Jrnl. Environmental Health 25 69/1 Patients are admitted, ‘triaged’, and treated physically or scheduled or housed.
1977 M. Herr Dispatches 82 He was so bad that the doctor triaged him, passed him over to treat the ones that..could still be saved.
1997 New Yorker 29 Sept. 55/3 Nurses would triage incoming flu patients by looking at the color of their feet.
2020 Guardian (Nexis) 9 Mar. Ensure that their treating doctor has all relevant information..so your loved one can be triaged appropriately.
b. transitive. More generally: to determine the most urgent, important, etc., people or things out of (a number requiring attention); to prioritize. Cf. triage n. 2b. See also earlier to triage out 2 at Phrasal verbs.
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1980 G. Hardin Promethean Ethics iv. 61 If there is no real scarcity, then there is no need to triage the applicants [for international aid].
1991 N. Rush Mating vii. 408 The questions I was entertaining were for my eyes only and could always be triaged.
2003 D. L. Duke & P. D. Tucker in D. L. Duke et al. Educ. Leadership in Age of Accountability iii. 90 A high school that has yet to reach a 70% passing rate might feel compelled to focus on achieving that benchmark—which could mean triaging students.
2019 National (Scotl.) (Nexis) 28 Sept. Better funding of free advice provision would potentially save the public purse in the long run, as lay advisers could effectively triage requests rather than refer people on to solicitors.
Phrasal verbs
With adverbs in specialized senses. to triage out
1. transitive. Medicine. To decide against immediate treatment of (a patient).
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1964 Med. Econ. 30 Nov. 94/1 He's then referred to the appropriate section of the E.R. for treatment by a resident, or triaged out to a private physician, an outpatient clinic or his home.
1965 Public Health Rep. (U.S. Public Health Service) 80 398/1 Only about 18 percent of patients screened by the triage officer are directly triaged out.
1995 G. Handysides Triage in Emergency Pract. i. 19 4186 patients were triaged out in the first 6 months of the new policy to triage out patients with nonurgent problems.
2017 Sunday Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica) 9 July a3/1 In 2016, of the more than 90,000 persons who visited the hospital, more than 19,000 were triaged out.
2. transitive. More generally: to determine that (a person or thing) is among the least urgent, important, etc., of a number requiring attention.
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1976 Commonweal 2 Jan. 18/2 There was always the danger that a resource supplier might embargo us out of ideological or racial sympathy with nations ‘triaged out’.
1995 Fighting Family Violence: Hearing before Special Comm. on Aging, U.S. Senate (103rd Congr., 2nd Sess.) 70 Currently in Maine, somewhere between 80 and 90% of all child protective reports are triaged out, not because they shouldn't be evaluated, but because there is insufficient staff.
2001 C. Shuler & A. Fincham in P. Schwartz et al. Problem-based Learning xvii. 132 One student..was triaged out..because of his group interaction during the ‘PBL interview’.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2020; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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