autopsy

1. 1.

   an examination and dissection of a dead body to determine cause of death or the changes produced by disease

   Synonymsnecropsypostmortempost-mortemPMpostmortem examinationpost-mortem examination

   Broaderexamination

1. 1.

   perform an autopsy on a dead body; do a post-mortem

   Broaderexamine

   medicine

Other forms of autopsy

plural

autopsies·

past tense

autopsied·

present participle

autopsying·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about autopsy

What does autopsy mean?

autopsy means "an examination and dissection of a dead body to determine cause of death or the changes produced by disease". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in autopsy?

autopsy has 3 syllables: au-top-sy. The stress falls on "au". In IPA it is /ˈɔˌtɑpsi/.

What is another word for autopsy?

Close synonyms include necropsy, postmortem, post-mortem, PM, postmortem examination. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is autopsy a common word?

autopsy is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.