postmortem
7 synonyms and 0 antonyms for postmortem, grouped by meaning and by how common each one is.
Noun — An examination of a dead body carried out to establish how the person died.
Synonyms
Everyday swaps
Common words most readers know — safe in any writing.
Less common
Still standard English, but they carry more weight.
Rare, literary or technical
Precise, but they will stand out — check the sense before using one.
Synonyms by Meaning
1. noun
An examination of a dead body carried out to establish how the person died.
“The postmortem showed the cause of death was heart failure.”
2. noun
A review held after a project, event or failure to work out what happened and what should be done differently.
“We ran a blameless postmortem the day after the outage.”
How to use postmortem
The word patterns that sound natural to a native speaker.
Written postmortem in American English and often post-mortem in British English. Sense 2 is standard in engineering and business.
Etymology
From Latin post mortem, "after death".
Full origin of postmortem →Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a postmortem and an autopsy?
In practice they mean the same procedure, and postmortem is simply short for post-mortem examination. Autopsy is the more common word in American medical usage; postmortem is preferred in Britain. Necropsy is the term used for animals.
What is a blameless postmortem?
It is a review of an incident conducted on the explicit understanding that no individual will be punished for what is uncovered. The aim is to get an honest account of how the system allowed the failure, on the basis that people hide facts when they fear blame.
Is it postmortem or post-mortem?
Both are correct. American English generally closes it up as postmortem; British English keeps the hyphen, especially in the medical sense. Be consistent within a single document.