Meaning of postmortem

/ˈpoʊstˌmɔrtəm/ Other forms: postmortems A postmortem is a medical examination of a dead body. It's a kind of autopsy done to learn exactly how the person died. In Latin, mortem is a form of the word for "death," and post means "after." A postmortem, logically enough, is something that happens after death, usually an examination. Another type of postmortem is a meeting or discussion that follows the completion of a project — this kind does not involve an actual death, but simply the end of something, like an art installation or a business venture.

The etymology of the word posthumous tells a complex story. In Latin, posterus is an adjective meaning "coming after" (from post, meaning "after"). The comparative form of posterus is postumus, which means, among other things, "last." Postumus had specific application in referring to the last of a man's children, which in some cases meant those born after he had died. Latin speakers incorrectly identified the - umus in this word with humus, meaning "dirt" or "earth" (suggesting the ground in which the unfortunate father now lay). The Latin spelling became posthumus, as if the word were formed from post and humus, and both the "h" and the suggestion of "after burial" or "after death" carried over into English. Where does posthumous come from? Readers who are looking for the origins of the word posthumous may be interested to know that it is an example of a cockroach, which was formed by substituting the English words cock (the name of a bird) and roach (the name of a fish) for the similar-sounding but totally unrelated Spanish word for a bug, cucaracha. Posthumous comes from the Latin posthumus, which is itself an alteration of postumus ("born after the father's death"). It is thought that the word humus (meaning "dirt, earth" in Latin) was substituted for - umus in the mistaken belief that the word's final element had something to do with the soil in a grave. Recent Examples on the Web Since his death, Hussle has been honored with a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of...

The importance of an incident postmortem process Incidents happen. They just do. As our systems grow in scale and complexity, failures are inevitable. Incidents are also a learning opportunity. A chance to uncover vulnerabilities in your system. An opportunity to mitigate repeat incidents and decrease time to resolution. A time to bring your teams together and plan for how they can be even better next time. The best way to work through what happened during an incident and capture any lessons learned is by conducting an incident postmortem, also known as a post-incident review. An incident postmortem brings people together to discuss the details of an incident: why it happened, its impact, what actions were taken to mitigate it and resolve it, and what should be done to prevent it from happening again. Thanks to tools like version control, feature flags, and continuous delivery, a lot of incidents can be quickly “undone.” Many incidents are caused by some bug in a change pushed to production, and rolling back that change can get the app up and running again. This is really beneficial for everyone, it gets the service quickly working again. But it often doesn’t help you understand what failed and why. This is where postmortems come in. An incident postmortem is a framework for learning from incidents and turning problems into progress. It also builds trust with customers, colleagues, and end users (basically the folks affected by the incident) and lets them know your team is...

Princeton's WordNet Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votes • autopsy, necropsy, postmortem, post-mortem, PM, postmortem examination, post-mortem examination noun an examination and dissection of a dead body to determine cause of death or the changes produced by disease • postmortem, post-mortem noun discussion of an event after it has occurred Wikipedia Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votes • post-mortem An autopsy (post-mortem examination, obduction, necropsy, or autopsia cadaverum) is a surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse by dissection to determine the cause, mode, and manner of death; or the exam may be performed to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present for research or educational purposes. For animals, the term necropsy is generally reserved. Autopsies are usually performed by a specialized medical doctor called a pathologist. Only a small portion of deaths require an autopsy to be performed, under certain circumstances. In most cases, a medical examiner or coroner can determine the cause of death. Examples of Post-Mortem in a Sentence • The body was recovered on April 6 by the side of a highway and according to a post mortem report, the girl was sexually assaulted and murdered on April 5. • If not for him [ Day ] and the staff, my words would not be a reflection, they would be evidence in a post-mortem. • Few diseases present greater difficulties in the way of diagnosis than malignant endocarditis, difficulties which in many ...