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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

Etymology

Origin of test tube¹

First recorded in 1840–50

Origin of test-tube²

First recorded in 1885–90

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

test tube test-tube

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

From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2025

You can buy a little extra test tube to help your sorting process by watching about 90 seconds of ads.

From Slate ● Dec. 28, 2024

Daniel Perez, an influenza researcher at the University of Georgia, is doing his own test tube study of pasteurization of milk spiked with a different avian influenza virus.

From Science Magazine ● Apr. 22, 2024

Observing a single molecule provides information that is often obscured when looking at thousands of molecules in traditional so-called "ensemble" experiments in a test tube.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 11, 2024

As I recall, we barely managed to get a test tube of water out of it—but I’ll bet Kelton could make a functional one.

From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman

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

Mills explained to Salon via email that the press release Rogan cited refers to "a test-tube study and has the same strengths and limitations as any test tube study."

From Salon ● Feb. 2, 2022

In Bethesda, Maryland, in the middle of a wide-open warehouse that was once a Fritos factory, he built a glass-enclosed room that housed a rotating conveyor belt with hundreds of test-tube holders built into it.

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