Meaning & use
botched surgery
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Meaning
nouncountable or uncountableinformal
A medical operation that was done badly and caused problems or did not fix the condition.
Grammar: Countable when referring to a specific operation: 'a botched surgery'; uncountable when talking about the event in general: 'botched surgery is rare'.
Patterns
- a botched surgery
- botched surgery on someone
- undergo botched surgery
She needed a second operation to repair the botched surgery on her knee.
The hospital is being sued over a botched surgery that left him in constant pain.
Reports of botched surgery at the clinic led to an official investigation.
Word forms
| plural | botched surgeries |
|---|
Common combinations
- a botched surgery
- He never recovered from a botched surgery on his spine.
- botched surgery on someone
- The lawsuit claims botched surgery on three patients.
- allegedly botched surgery
- The article described an allegedly botched surgery at a private clinic.
- botched surgery case
- The lawyer specializes in botched surgery cases.
Synonyms and how they differ
- surgical error
- More formal and neutral; it names the mistake itself rather than judging the whole operation.
- failed operation
- Focuses on the result (it did not work) rather than on the quality of the work.
- malpractice
- A legal term for professional negligence, which may or may not involve a badly performed operation.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: botched surgery or butchered surgery?
botched surgery vs butchered surgery
'Butchered' is a stronger, more violent word; 'botched' just means done badly.
Practice
The patient is seeking compensation for a ______ surgery that left her unable to walk.
Choose one answer.
The adjective 'botched' describes the surgery. 'Botching' would need a different structure (e.g. 'a surgery botching the repair'), and 'botch'/'botches' are verb forms that cannot modify a noun here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “botched surgery”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.