trepanned

The Greek trypanon named the borer, a drill turned by hand or bow, and from it came trepanum in Medieval Latin by the 13th century. English surgeons adopted trepan by the 1540s, and trepanned followed almost immediately as the adjective for any skull that had been opened by the instrument. The word entered surgical manuals as a past participle, carrying no drama beyond its literal meaning.

Skulls with perfectly circular holes appear at Neolithic sites across Europe, the Andes, and North Africa, some dating to 7000 BCE. Many show signs of bone regrowth around the edges, which means the patients survived the operation. In 1585, the French surgeon Ambroise Paré described the procedure in precise detail, recommending a bow-driven drill for slow, controlled penetration of the skull without disturbing the brain below.

By the 17th century, trepanned had acquired a second meaning in London slang: to be lured into a trap, drilled into as surely as a skull by a clever criminal. John Dryden used the slang form in 1681 in a poem. The double sense lasted about a century before the criminal meaning faded and the surgical one held.

Modern neurosurgeons prefer the term craniotomy or burr hole, but the ancient name survives in medical history and forensic anthropology. Archaeologists describe Incan, Egyptian, and European specimens as trepanned skulls because the word has never found a better replacement. The circular absence in ancient bone still carries the name of the Greek tool that first made it possible.