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.
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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:
Those mutation targets are encoded into mRNA and manufactured into a vaccine—a process that takes about six weeks from the date of the biopsy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
With additional research, she hopes extracellular vesicles might one day function as a type of liquid biopsy.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 22, 2026
The content creator said her daughter underwent numerous X-rays, ultrasounds and a biopsy before the hospital team confirmed the cancer diagnosis.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2026
A biopsy revealed cancer, and then after a MRI scan she was told she had stage four metastatic breast cancer.
From BBC ● Jun. 5, 2026
Then, a few days later, Jones got her biopsy results from the pathology lab: “Epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, Stage I.”
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
Those results suggest that blood-based DNA analysis could eventually reduce reliance on invasive liver biopsies for some patients.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026
These patients “are having more and more and more scares, biopsies, concerns, and they feel like they already have cancer,” she said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026
Classifying a patient as cured also allows them to avoid intrusive, and sometimes painful, screening tests, like bone marrow biopsies.
From Slate ● Mar. 29, 2026
But these biopsies can be very invasive and sometimes cause harm, and doctors may struggle to get a sample.
From BBC ● Feb. 11, 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
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
The “Strong Looks Better Naked” author opened up about her history with skin-cancer scares in 2016, telling then-users of her official app that she frequently has moles checked and often has to have them biopsied.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 1, 2023
After three months, muscles from participants’ legs were biopsied, and scientists analyzed the activity level of over 20,000 genes in the tissue samples.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
The cells did grow, but when Hyatt biopsied them a few weeks later, they were all cancerous.
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
Definitions 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.
