damage control
1
4.1
- noun
- /ˈdæmɪdʒ kənˈtroʊl/
- Specialized
:
cirugía de control de daños
Examples
-
Washington wants full damage control.
-
Section: DAMAGE CONTROL
Academic text (1996) -
In trauma surgery, damage control is critical for preventing further injury before definitive repairs can be made.
-
The medical team employed damage control techniques to stabilize the patient after the severe car accident.
-
During the emergency procedure, the doctors focused on damage control to quickly manage the patient's life-threatening injuries.
How Urgent
- Specialized
8
3.0
- Specialized
12
4.0
- Specialized
1
4.1
- US
28
3.9
- Specialized
∞
2.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'actions to limit or manage harm' is directly and transparently built from 'damage' (harm) + 'control' (to manage or restrain). Even when used in a specialised medical sense, it is a straightforward application of controlling damage rather than an idiomatic shift, and equivalent constructions exist in many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer the general meaning.
Etymology
Damage control in medicine comes from the same image: surgeons do quick, temporary repairs to stop heavy bleeding and keep a patient alive. By trying to control the damage fast, they buy time for a full operation later, so in hospitals it means 'quick, temporary steps to stop bleeding and make a patient stable before a full operation'.