lobotomy
lob·o·tomy/ləˈbɑtəmi/noun
lobotomy is spelled L-O-B-O-T-O-M-Y, 3 syllables: lob·o·tomy. The wrong spelling people search most is labotomy: about 670 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 12 of all searches for the word. Lobotomy is a noun meaning “A surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically (neurosurgery), a procedure…”. The plural of lobotomy is lobotomies.
How many letters and syllables are in lobotomy?
| Letters | 8: L-O-B-O-T-O-M-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: lob·o·tomy |
| In writing | about once in every 3 million words; the 55,433rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, labotomy, about 670 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell lobotomy?
Lobotomy is spelled L-O-B-O-T-O-M-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 12 of the searches for lobotomy in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is lobotomy?
Lobotomy appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 55,433rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce lobotomy?
- UK /ləˈbɒtəmi/
- US /ləˈbɑtəmi/
- US [-ɾə-]
Lobotomy has 3 syllables, split lob·o·tomy in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-lobotomy.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-lobotomy.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with lobotomy?
4 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as lobotomy from its last stressed vowel (/ɑtəmi/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of lobotomy
- lobotomies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does lobotomy mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically (neurosurgery), a procedure, now largely disused, involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and the thalamic region of the frontal lobe of the brain to treat certain mental illnesses.
- 2
An operation involving the severing of the sympathetic nerve trunk.
- 3
An act of removing or separating, and often disregarding or forgetting, something.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Lobotomy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically a:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does lobotomy come from?
From lob(e) + -otomy (a variant of -tomy (suffix denoting a surgical incision)).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).