The “autopsy” enigma: etymology, related terms and unambiguous alternatives

Abstract

AbstractThe concerted use of Greek-derived medical terms in the present day allows us to facilitate effective communication while honouring the historic roots of Western medicine. The word autopsy derives from its third century B.C. Hellenistic Greek etymon αὐτοψία (“to see for oneself”), later borrowed into Neo-Latin as autopsia and Middle French as autopsie. Throughout its etymological journey, autopsie underwent semantic narrowing from the passive sense “self-inspection of something without touching”, to a purposeful action by an operator performing “an examination of the human body itself”, to specifically “dissection of a dead human body”. These curious turning points for the meaning of autopsie produced an auto-antonym: the same word now has multiple meanings, of which one is the reverse of another. The French autopsie used in the latter sense predates that documented for the English autopsy (attested 1829). Since the early nineteenth century, attempts were made to remedy the discrepancy between conflicting senses either by adding determining adjectives to the existing noun, or by substituting it with another word altogether. This review explores the etymological journey of autopsy, considers which related terms have been popularised throughout history, introduces the concept of lexical ambiguity and suggests unambiguous English compound (necropsy and necrotomy) and Latin-derived (non-invasive and invasive postmortem examination) alternatives to satisfy a recent appetite for clarity in international professional and next-of-kin communication.