Surgical stitching or suturing of the tongue, performed to repair wounds, lacerations, or to attach the tongue to surrounding tissues.
From Greek 'glossa' (tongue) + 'rhaphe' (seam, suture). The '-rraphy' suffix comes from the same Greek root and is standard medical terminology for any surgical stitching or joining procedure.
Tongue wounds can be surprisingly serious because the tongue has so much blood flow—it bleeds heavily even from small cuts, so glossorrhaphy had to evolve to handle both the bleeding and the movement of the tongue while it heals.
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