Orthopaedics and trauma surgery

On a German trauma ward die Extension is often not what an English speaker expects. The word does have the anatomical sense English knows: Flexion und Extension are the bending and the straightening of a joint. But a patient whose leg liegt in Extension is not lying with it held straight; the leg is in traction. A wire is passed through the bone, a cord runs over a pulley to a weight, and the steady pull keeps the broken limb at its length and roughly in line until it can be fixed. The full name is die Extensionsbehandlung, and die Drahtextension says what carries the pull. English puts none of this into its own word: an extension adds time, a room or a telephone line, and nobody on an English ward would use it for traction. When German means the joint rather than the weight, the everyday verb is strecken.