autopsy

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English

Painting of an autopsy.

Alternative forms

Etymology

From New Latin autopsia, from Ancient Greek αὐτοψῐ́ᾱ (autopsíā, “seeing with one's own eyes”).

Pronunciation

Noun

autopsy (plural autopsies)

  1. A dissection performed on a cadaver to find possible cause(s) of death.
    Synonyms: necropsy, necrotomy, postmortem
    The autopsy revealed he had died of multiple bullet wounds.
  2. (figuratively) An after-the-fact examination, especially of the causes of a failure.
    Synonym: postmortem
    • 1977, National Science Foundation (U.S.), Washington State University. Computer Science Dept, Proceedings of Conference on Computers in the Undergraduate Curricula (issue 8)
      This lack of built-in clutter makes the system easy to comprehend. Debugging facilities are few but powerful: snapshots, tracing, and autopsy.
    • 2017 January 19, Steve Phillips, “The Next DNC Chair Must Abandon Color-Blind Politics”, in The Nation‎, new York, N.Y.: The Nation Company, L.P., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-08-12:
      Understanding exactly what happened and why is an essential first step to winning back the White House. ¶ In addition to the autopsy, the DNC should abandon the penchant for secrecy and embrace the principles of transparency and accountability that helped inspire and engage millions of people to participate in the 2008 Obama campaign.
  3. (rare) An eyewitness observation, the presentation of an event as witnessed.

Usage notes

  • The term necropsy is usually used for non-human animals, with autopsy reserved for human beings.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

autopsy (third-person singular simple present autopsies, present participle autopsying, simple past and past participle autopsied)

  1. (transitive) To perform an autopsy on.
  2. (transitive) To perform an after-the-fact analysis of, especially of a failure.
    • 1977, National Science Foundation (U.S.), Washington State University. Computer Science Dept, Proceedings of Conference on Computers in the Undergraduate Curricula (issue 8)
      The user may define his own errors, and use DUMPAL to autopsy the system for him.

Derived terms

Translations

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