Triage
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /ˈtɹiË.É‘ËÊ’/
- US IPA: /ˈtɹi.ɑʒ/, /tɹiˈɑʒ/
Origin
From French triage, from trier ("to sort")
Full definition of triage
Noun
triage
(uncountable)- Assessment or sorting according to quality.
- 2004, Paul M. Levitt, Dark Matters: a Novel, Let us think of triage, and remember the word's origins. It began with French wool growers in the eighteenth century, but its most illuminating use comes from eighteenth century coffee bean growers, who sorted their beans into best, middling, and broken. The last category came to be known as 'triage coffee.' In war we attend to the most seriously wounded first, which is how most of us understand the word today. ... Therefore to protect the best and the middling, we must sell off our 'triage coffee.'
- 2007, Jeremy Harding, It Migrates to Them, London Review of Books 29:5, p. 26,Davis notes that the 'late capitalist triage of humanity' has 'already taken place'.
- (medicine) The process of sorting patients so as to determine the order in which they will be treated (for example, by assigning precedence according to the urgency of illness or injury).
- (computing, by extension) The process of prioritizing bugs to be fixed.
Verb
- To assess or sort according to quality or some other aspect.
- 2009, February 01, Linda Diebel, Existential crises and a rage to save the Liberals, Then, over 2001 and '02, he laid off 150 employees at MGI Software, a company he'd first "triaged" as a consultant for NPV Associates with his partner and fellow UCC alumnus Henry Eaton, before stepping in as CEO. Firing 30 per cent of the work force was necessary to save the company, insists NPV principal partner Eaton.