Meaning
Undergoing or about to undergo a surgical operation. Usually in the form 'go under the knife': the surgeon's blade stands in for the whole procedure, so the patient is pictured as lying beneath the instrument on the operating table. Informal and slightly vivid; a favourite of headline writers, especially about cosmetic surgery. Around anxious patients, plainer phrasing like having an operation is kinder. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The metaphor transfers the surgeon's cutting instrument to the operation itself. Christine Ammer's American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms records knife standing for surgery from 1880, but freely viewable dated citations are later: Wiktionary's earliest is Time magazine, 24 April 1964, on the rumour that de Gaulle was under the knife. The literal surgical wording was current in the 1890s - H. G. Wells published a short story titled Under the Knife in The New Review in January 1896, about a patient terrified of dying under chloroform - and Wiktionary labels the idiom informal, noting it chiefly follows a form of go. Honest caveat: the 1880 date is a lexicographer's finding, and open nineteenth-century figurative examples are hard to verify directly, so the documented figurative record really firms up in the mid-twentieth century.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- go under the knife
- put someone under the knife
- went under the knife
Usage Examples
- After years of chronic knee pain, Mara finally agreed to go under the knife and have the joint fully repaired.
- The documentary follows three patients as they prepare to go under the knife for heart surgery next month.
- He postponed going under the knife until a less invasive procedure became available at his local hospital.