Definition of "triage"

triage

/ˈtɹiː.ɑːʒ/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural triages
1. Assessment or sorting according to quality, need, etc., especially to determine how resources will be allocated.
  Quotations
  Let us think of triage, and remember the word's origins. It began with French wool growers in the eighteenth century, but its most illuminating use comes from eighteenth century coffee bean growers, who sorted their beans into best, middling, and broken. The last category came to be known as 'triage coffee.' In war we attend to the most seriously wounded first, which is how most of [us] understand the word today. […] Therefore to protect the best and the middling, we must sell off our 'triage coffee.'
  2004, Paul M. Levitt, Dark Matters: a Novel‎, page 40
  [Mike Davis] notes that the 'late capitalist triage of humanity' has 'already taken place'.
  2007, Jeremy Harding, “It Migrates to Them”, in London Review of Books, 29:5, p. 26
2. (medicine) The process of sorting patients so as to determine the order in which they will be treated (for example, by assigning precedence according to the urgency of illness or injury).
3. (computing, by extension) The process of prioritizing bugs to be fixed.
4. That which is picked out, especially broken coffee beans.
5. (rail transport, military, Britain) A marshalling yard, classification yard.
  Quotations
  Similarly, any group of sidings is known to army railway personnel as a "triage". This word is derived from the French verb trier, which means literally "to sort," and hence "triage" has become the common army expression for a marshalling yard.
  1943 September and October, “Military and Civil Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 257
verb
third-person singular simple present triages, present participle triaging, simple past and past participle triaged
1. (chiefly medicine) To subject to triage; to prioritize.
  Quotations
  Then, over 2001 and '02, he laid off 150 employees at MGI Software, a company he'd first "triaged" as a consultant for NPV Associates with his partner and fellow UCC alumnus Henry Eaton, before stepping in as CEO. Firing 30 per cent of the work force was necessary to save the company, insists NPV principal partner Eaton.
  2009 February 1, Linda Diebel, “Existential crises and a rage to save the Liberals”, in Toronto Star‎
  With the ambulance service the calls are triaged, so your response time can be anything from six minutes for a life-threatening call to an hour and a half for a broken limb.
  2020 January 2, Daniel Puddicombe, “SWR paramedics keeping passengers safe”, in Rail, page 34
  I flipped from the calendar app to the email app and logged in to view Cooper's. The unreads were staggering; I'd have to triage them later.
  2022, Michelle McCraw, Boss Me
  For three months I was trained to chat with people who might be thinking of suicide. I learned how to triage them, and what words must be avoided at all costs.
  2022 September 27, Barclay Bram, “My Therapist, the Robot”, in The New York Times‎