Autopsied

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The examination of a body post-mortem to determine the cause of death is a procedure that provides vital insights into the circumstances surrounding a person's demise
2. This investigative process involves dissecting a deceased individual to uncover a possible reason for death and can help in forensic inquiries
3. Analyzing the remains of a deceased individual aims to clarify the manner of death and diagnose any underlying conditions implicated in the passing

Etymology: "Autopsied" is simply the past tense of "autopsy" used as a verb, so the real story is the noun it comes from. "Autopsy" descends from the Ancient Greek "autopsia", meaning "seeing with one's own eyes," built from "autos" ("self") and the root of "opsis" ("sight"). The Greek sense was about direct firsthand observation, not dissecting the dead. The modern medical meaning arrived through New Latin, the scholarly Latin used by early modern scientists, which adopted the Greek term for the examination of a body after death. The sense of witnessing for oneself is still visible in the word's core: the autopsy is the physician's own look at what caused a death.