Etymology
French morceler, to break into pieces


[edit] Alternative spellings
morcelate

[edit] Verb
morcellate

(medicine) To remove piece by piece.
I have an uncle who was a physician in the Congo in the 1960s. He was often confronted with very young girls (ages 8-10) who were pregnant but could not give birth because the birth canal was too narrow. Instead of doing c-sections (which at the time meant making a huge slit diagonally across the whole belly), they would morcellate the baby and remove it piece by piece. Those are the very words he used to describe it. [1]
Additional sutures are placed on and around the cervical stump to improve the support structures of the pelvis and avoid future prolapse. Thereafter, the uterus with or without the tubes and ovaries will be extracted through the small incisions via an instrument which allows the doctors to morcellate or cut up the tissues in small pieces. All the tissues will be evaluated by pathology doctors to rule out abnormalities. [2]
…forceps are then enucleated if its size is small or morcelated by the excision of piece after piece until the remaining small part of the growth can be extracted after enucleaction. A large cavity is left behind which is packed with gauze: in vaginal myomecotomy, a closure of the tumor cavity by suture is usually impracticable. Title: Atlas of operative gynecology Publisher: Lippincott Author(s): Barton Cooke Hirst Publication Date: 1919 Page:175

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Note added at 26 mins (2007-01-26 03:10:44 GMT)
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Ref. Wiktionary

(the "Example sentence - ü" was pasted erroneouly and ought to be disregarded).