autopsy

Etymology

From New Latin autopsia, from Ancient Greek αὐτοψῐ́ᾱ (autopsíā, “seeing with one's own eyes”).

noun

1. A dissection performed on a cadaver to find possible cause(s) of death.
   The autopsy revealed he had died of multiple bullet wounds.
2. An after-the-fact examination, especially of the causes of a failure.
   This lack of built-in clutter makes the system easy to comprehend. Debugging facilities are few but powerful: snapshots, tracing, and autopsy. 1977, National Science Foundation (U.S.), Washington State University. Computer Science Dept, Proceedings of Conference on Computers in the Undergraduate Curricula (issue 8)
3. (rare) An eyewitness observation, the presentation of an event as witnessed.

verb

1. (transitive) To perform an autopsy on.
2. (transitive) To perform an after-the-fact analysis of, especially of a failure.
   The user may define his own errors, and use DUMPAL to autopsy the system for him. 1977, National Science Foundation (U.S.), Washington State University. Computer Science Dept, Proceedings of Conference on Computers in the Undergraduate Curricula (issue 8)