English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

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

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

autopsy (plural autopsies)

  1. A dissection performed on a cadaver to find possible cause(s) of death.
    The autopsy revealed he had died of multiple bullet wounds.
  2. An after-the-fact examination, especially of the causes 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)
      This lack of built-in clutter makes the system easy to comprehend. Debugging facilities are few but powerful: snapshots, tracing, and autopsy.
  3. (rare) An eyewitness observation, the presentation of an event as witnessed.

Usage notes edit

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

Synonyms edit

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Verb edit

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.

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