lavage

The word 'lavage' is a direct borrowing from modern French, where it literally means 'washing'. Its core component, the morpheme 'lav-', traces back to the Latin verb 'lavare', meaning 'to wash'. This Latin root itself originates from the Proto-Indo-European root lewh₃-, which carried the sense of washing. The suffix '-age' was adopted into English via French from Latin '-aticum', a suffix used to form nouns denoting action or process. Thus, the etymological logic of 'lavage' is transparent: it combines the ancient concept of washing with a suffix that nominalizes the action, resulting in a modern medical term for the specific procedure of washing out an internal cavity.

Structure: lav (wash) + age (noun suffix) 'lav' is from Latin 'lavare', meaning 'to wash'. 'age' is a noun-forming suffix from Latin '-aticum', indicating an action or its result.