biopsy
Americannoun
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biopsies
plural
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the removal for diagnostic study of a piece of tissue from a living body.
-
a specimen obtained from a biopsy.
verb (used with object)
noun
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examination, esp under a microscope, of tissue from a living body to determine the cause or extent of a disease
-
the sample taken for such an examination
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of biopsy
Explanation
A biopsy is a sample of tissue or liquid from the body that helps determine if you have a disease. If your doctor finds a lump in part of your body, she will probably do a biopsy to see if it is cancerous or not. Bios means "life" and opsis means "see" or "sight," so a biopsy is a way for a doctor to look into your body, so to speak, by taking a sample of it. There are different kinds of biopsies, depending on where the tissue is that your doctor needs to look at. You might have a surgical biopsy or a less invasive biopsy by needle.
Vocabulary lists containing biopsy
Words to Live By: Bio
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Common Senses: Op, Ops, Opt ("Sight")
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National Nurses Week: Common Medical Terms
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The mum-of-two, from Merthyr Tydfil, first noticed a "small pea-sized" lump in her breast in 2018, but, after an ultrasound, she was told it was likely glandular tissue and no biopsy was carried out.
From BBC ● Nov. 2, 2026
"Often, the lesion can be accessed from the outside or inside, for instance, via image-guided biopsy or endoscopy, but sometimes this is not possible," Venuta said.
From Barron's ● Oct. 13, 2026
Scientists biopsy and genetically sequence a patient’s tumor cells.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
Despite that, he said, it took five months for California City to get him a biopsy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
Examination of a biopsy specimen of fat showed an accumulation of 23 parts per million of DDT.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
Scientists tested the approach using bone biopsies from older adults.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 27, 2026
Despite scans and biopsies, experts could not figure out why she was ill.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2026
A false positive can send someone into scans and biopsies they never needed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
If a patient gets a positive test, they are instructed to undergo a cancer work-up, whether that’s imaging or biopsies.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 23, 2026
TeLinde set out to minimize what he called “unjustifiable hysterectomies” by documenting what wasn’t cervical cancer and by urging surgeons to verify smear results with biopsies before operating.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
Consultant plastic surgeon Neil Wickham checked her face, confirmed a biopsied lump on her arm was benign, and referred her to ENT for a separate lump in her neck.
From BBC ● Sep. 10, 2026
After the initial diagnosis, Blevins said, doctors biopsied another “dark spot” that had appeared near the mole on his foot, and removed “a larger area around the melanoma.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2024
In diagnostic testing, a pathologist examines biopsied tissues under a microscope to identify cellular abnormalities that may hint at disease.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 11, 2024
So McGrane and colleagues biopsied the tongue of a 6-year-old male cat that had been euthanized for health reasons unrelated to the study.
From Science Magazine ● Aug. 25, 2023
In 1951, the same year Jones biopsied Henrietta’s tumor, researchers from Columbia University reported that the two types of cancer were easily and often confused.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
But the laborious strategy deployed in this study — biopsying the tumor, sequencing it and then dividing the patients into mutation-guided treatments — provided few novel therapeutic inroads.
From New York Times ● Jun. 13, 2018
The movement today is toward biopsying 5-day embryos using microarray comparative genomic hybridization, which examines all 23 chromosome pairs and provides a more detailed picture of the entire length of the chromosomes.
From Slate ● Mar. 19, 2014
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
