Definition of "autopsy"

autopsy

/ˈɔːtɒpsiː/

noun
plural autopsies
1. A dissection performed on a cadaver to find possible cause(s) of death.
2. An after-the-fact examination, especially of the causes of a failure.
  Quotations
  This lack of built-in clutter makes the system easy to comprehend. Debugging facilities are few but powerful: snapshots, tracing, and autopsy.
  1977, National Science Foundation (U.S.), Washington State University. Computer Science Dept, Proceedings of Conference on Computers in the Undergraduate Curricula (issue 8)
3. (rare) An eyewitness observation, the presentation of an event as witnessed.
verb
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.
  Quotations
  The user may define his own errors, and use DUMPAL to autopsy the system for him.
  1977, National Science Foundation (U.S.), Washington State University. Computer Science Dept, Proceedings of Conference on Computers in the Undergraduate Curricula (issue 8)