The word is a modern medical compound formed from international scientific vocabulary. Its first element, 'staped-', derives from the Modern Latin 'stapes', the name for the stirrup-shaped bone in the middle ear, which itself originated from a Late Latin word for 'stirrup'. The final element, '-tomy', is borrowed directly from the Greek '-tomia', a derivative of 'temnein' meaning 'to cut', a common suffix in surgical terminology. The literal construction, "cutting of the stapes," precisely describes the surgical procedure of creating an opening in that specific bone to restore hearing function, demonstrating the systematic and descriptive nature of medical neologisms.

Structure: staped (stapes) + o (combining vowel) + tomy (cutting) staped (from Modern Latin 'stapes', meaning stirrup, the shape of the bone); o (a connecting vowel, typically of Greek origin, used to join word roots); tomy (from Greek '-tomia', meaning cutting, incision).