/ ˈtriːɑːʒ; NAmE triːˈɑːʒ/ noun
[ U ] ( in a hospital ) the process of deciding how seriously ill / sick or injured a person is, so that the most serious cases can be treated first
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WORD ORIGIN
early 18th cent. (in the sense the action of sorting items according to quality ): from French , from trier separate out. The current sense dates from the 1930s, from the military system of assessing the wounded on the battlefield.