A puzzle

I have become aware of the word 'resection' over the last year or so, both as a noun and a verb, meaning a cutting out. This I found slightly puzzling, the associations for me for the word 'section' being to do with cross sections of things like buildings, tubes and geological formation and those diagrams of cross sections often called sections for short. Eventually I make my way to the OED to find that resection is the prefix 're-' plus 'secare', this last being the Latin for to cut. Resect may be used as a past participle, so one might be resect from the community of saints, but this use is a bit obsolete, along with the community of saints. More commonly used as a verb in a medical sense, meaning to cut away, with resection being a noun denoting an action or operation of that sort.

So far, so good. But why the 're-' bit, which to me means re for repeat. Look it up to find that it is an originally Latin prefix of rather diffuse meaning, occupying a three column page in the dictionary. Original meaning back, or backwards, as in , for example, repel or repeal. Then back to an original position, then again. All kinds of words have the 're' prefix, including, for example, religion which is (on some authorities anyway) 're' plus 'ligare', to tie. So perhaps we have the notion of cutting back, cutting back to the good, rather as if one was tidying up one's apple trees.

For good measure I check up on 'section', occupying another three column page. Which I find can be a cutting verb, but is now more usually a having been cut noun denoting a part of a whole. The original sense of being a part sectioned, or cut away from a whole, rather lost in the section of a book, where sections build up to books just as much as books cut down to sections. There is also the more recent sense involving technical drawings, which is where I came in.

So there.