word
French
Triage
lit. โto sortโ
Sorting cases by urgency when you can't help everyone โ and choosing where to put scarce effort.
Origin
Developed by Napoleon's surgeon-general Dominique Jean Larrey during the early-19th-century wars: treat the most savable first, regardless of rank. The system was refined in WWI and now structures every modern emergency room.
Modern usage
Standard in tech, support teams, and product management. 'Triage the bug queue' is a normal sentence. The implication of brutal prioritization โ some things will not be helped โ is usually understood.
In the wild
We triaged the incident reports by customer impact.โ engineering usage
Tags
prioritization
medicine
war