Latin today · Medicine · Law & politics · Business & office
Post mortem
“after death”
Latin word in modern English
Meaning
What does “Post mortem” mean?
In medicine a post mortem (autopsy) establishes the cause of death. In business and tech, a "post-mortem" is a review held after a project or incident to learn from it.
In real life
Where you meet it
In hospitals and coroners’ courts, crime reporting, and in project teams after a launch or outage.
Example
“Post mortem” in a sentence
The team held a post-mortem to find out why the website went down.
Origin
Where the word comes from
Post means "after" and mortem is a form of mors, "death".
Pronunciation
How to say it
Usual Englishpohst MOR-tum
Classical Latinpost MOR-tem
Good to know
Common mistakes
- As an adjective or noun in English it is often hyphenated: a post-mortem.
- A business post-mortem should look for causes, not culprits – many teams call it "blameless".
- Latin
- Post mortem
- Literally
- after death
- Used in
- Medicine, Law & politics, Business & office
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