Triage

/ˈtɹiː.ɑːʒ/ · noun

Meaning

Assessment or sorting according to quality, need, etc., especially to determine how resources will be allocated..

Definitions by Sense

1. Assessment or sorting according to quality, need, etc., especially to determine how resources will be allocated.
2. (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).
3. (computing, by extension) The process of prioritizing bugs to be fixed.
4. That which is picked out, especially broken coffee beans.
5. (rail transport, military, British) A marshalling yard, classification yard.
6. (chiefly medicine) To subject to triage; to prioritize.

Example Sentences

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.'

[Mike Davis] notes that the 'late capitalist triage of humanity' has 'already taken place'.

Similarly, any group of sidings is known to army railway personnel as a "triage". This word is derived from the French verb trier, which means literally "to sort," and hence "triage" has become the common army expression for a marshalling yard.

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.

With the ambulance service the calls are triaged, so your response time can be anything from six minutes for a life-threatening call to an hour and a half for a broken limb.

I flipped from the calendar app to the email app and logged in to view Cooper's. The unreads were staggering; I'd have to triage them later.

For three months I was trained to chat with people who might be thinking of suicide. I learned how to triage them, and what words must be avoided at all costs.

Synonyms for triage

Antonyms for triage

Related Words

Word Forms

• triages
• triaging
• triaged

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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