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• test tube
  test tube

  noun

  a hollow cylinder of thin glass with one end closed, used in chemical and biological experimentation and analysis.
• test-tube
  test-tube

  adjective

  produced in or as if in a test tube; synthetic or experimental.

test tube

¹ American  

noun

• test tubes
  plural

1. a hollow cylinder of thin glass with one end closed, used in chemical and biological experimentation and analysis.

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test-tube ² American  

[test-toob, -tyoob] / ˈtɛstˌtub, -ˌtjub /

adjective

1. produced in or as if in a test tube; synthetic or experimental.

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test tube British  

noun

1. a cylindrical round-bottomed glass tube open at one end: used in scientific experiments

2. (modifier) made synthetically in, or as if in, a test tube

   a test-tube product

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test tube Scientific  

/ tĕst /

1. A cylindrical tube of clear glass, usually open at one end and rounded at the other, used as a container for small amounts of a substance in laboratory tests and experiments.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• test tubes
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of test tube¹

First recorded in 1840–50

Origin of test-tube²

First recorded in 1885–90

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

test tube test-tube

Russian news outlet People of Baikal reported on Friday that the dead woman -- named as 28-year-old Darya Shipilova -- may have contracted pneumonic plague from a broken test tube.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

"Biochemists more than a decade before us showed that TPP1 increases the activity of telomerase in a test tube, but we never knew that this actually happened clinically," he said.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 1, 2026

It comprised a brick-coloured concoction bubbling away in a test tube.

From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2025

But always, there is the very good chance of restoring order to your test tube universe.

From Slate ● Dec. 28, 2024

No one has so far mixed together the gases and waters of the primitive Earth and at the end of the experiment had something crawl out of the test tube.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

If fertility continues to fall, we may indeed drift toward the world Aldous Huxley imagined—a “brave new world” possible only with test-tube babies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 27, 2026

Jarrell-Searcy's parents met over a test-tube centrifuge in a laboratory.

From BBC ● Mar. 26, 2026

At the time, they were called test-tube babies.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 27, 2024

The news simply said that in a test-tube study, ivermectin showed "antiviral" capabilities against omicron.

From Salon ● Feb. 2, 2022

That lady has achieved true immortality, both in the test-tube and in the hearts and minds of scientists the world over, since the value of HeLa cells in research, diagnosis, etc., is inestimable.

From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot

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