/ˈɔːtɒpsi/
[noun] A medical examination of a dead body to find out the cause of death or to study the effects of a disease. It is usually carried out by a doctor called a pathologist.
Autopsy literally means 'seeing with your own eyes' — it was originally a philosophical term, not a medical one.
The word 'autopsy' reaches back to ancient Greek, where it was built from two parts: 'autos', meaning 'self', and 'opsis', meaning 'sight' or 'the act of seeing'. Put together, the Greek word 'autopsia' simply meant 'seeing for oneself' — the act of witnessing something directly with your own eyes, rather than hearing about it second-hand. It carried no medical meaning whatsoever in its earliest uses. Greek philosophers used it to describe the value of direct personal observation over rumour or hearsay.
The word passed into Late Latin as 'autopsia', still carrying that same philosophical flavour of first-hand witness. For centuries it remained a general term in learned European writing, used to describe the idea of seeing something personally rather than relying on another person's account. This sense was particularly valued in an era when travel was difficult and most knowledge of distant places came through the reports of others.
The word entered English in the mid-17th century, around the 1650s, initially keeping this broader meaning of direct observation. Early English writers used it in contexts that had nothing to do with death or medicine — it simply meant 'personal inspection'. The shift toward its modern, specifically medical meaning happened gradually during the 17th and 18th centuries, as the practice of examining corpses to understand disease became more accepted and more formalised in European medicine.
The medical use made perfect sense as a natural extension of the original meaning. A post-mortem examination was, after all, the ultimate act of seeing for oneself — cutting open a body to look directly at what had happened inside, rather than simply guessing at a cause of death. The Ancient Greek root 'opsis' also gave English several other words through different paths: Greek 'opsis' → Latin 'opticus' → English 'optic', and Greek 'ops' (eye) combined with other roots to produce 'optical', 'synopsis' (literally 'a seeing together'), and 'biopsy' (from Greek 'bios' meaning 'life' combined with 'opsis', so literally 'a seeing of living tissue').
It is worth noting that 'autopsy' has a near-synonym in 'post-mortem', which comes from Latin 'post' meaning 'after' and 'mors' meaning 'death', so it simply means 'after death'. While both words are used in medical and legal contexts today, 'autopsy' is more common in American English and 'post-mortem' is slightly more preferred in British English. Interestingly, 'post-mortem' has also developed a broader everyday use — people speak of a 'post-mortem' on a failed business deal or a lost football match, meaning a careful examination of what went wrong. 'Autopsy' has stayed closer to its strictly medical sense, perhaps because its Greek root, though equally logical, is less transparent to most modern readers.