Words: amputee, n.

PAUL MCCARTNEY'S "Yesterday" has been much recorded, but a version that receives little airplay in our politically correct era is an off- the-cuff 1974 one by John Lennon: "Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be / 'Cos now I'm an amputee."

The verb to amputate, from Latin, surfaced in the 17th century as a gardening term. Sir Thomas Browne later noted that the Amazons amputated the right breast better to fire arrows, and one of Johnson's longest, most grisly citations describes such an operation upon the limbs. Amputee emerged in Edwardian times, when St Bartholomew's noted a song worthy of Lennon: "Put the patient both to bed, and then, perhaps, we'll see / Which is the amputated part and which the amputee."