biopsy

US/ˈbaɪɑpsi/

nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,768 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: biopsies

A biopsy is the taking of tissue from a living body for examination. Have a biopsy, the biopsy came back clear, a needle biopsy.

It is the only way to know what a growth actually is, since a scan shows shape and a biopsy shows cells. The waiting between the procedure and the result is the part everybody who has had one remembers.

Definitions of biopsy

1nounbiopsyThe taking of tissue from a living body for examination.B2+
“The doctor took a biopsy of the lump to check whether it was cancer.”

biopsy is a procedure.

Where it comes from

French biopsie is built on Greek bios, life, plus opsis, a sight.

French
biopsie
English, today
biopsy

From French biopsie, from bi- + -opsy.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

biopsy in the wild

In this technique, a thin), hollow needle is inserted into the mass for sampling of cells that, after being stained, are examined under a microscope (biopsy).
Fine-needle aspiration
Liver biopsy is the biopsy (removal of a small sample of tissue) from the liver.
Liver biopsy
Prostate biopsy is a procedure in which small hollow needle-core samples are removed from a man's prostate gland to be examined for the presence of prostate cancer.
Prostate biopsy
Skin biopsy is a biopsy technique in which a skin lesion is removed to be sent to a pathologist to render a microscopic diagnosis.
Skin biopsy
A native renal biopsy is one in which the patient's own kidneys are biopsied.
Renal biopsy

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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