postmortem

Noun

post mortem (plural post mortems)

1. An investigation of a corpse to determine the cause of death.
   • Nor had the post mortem on Newson's body revealed any illness or other physical condition that might have prevented him from applying the brake, although after four days in the oven-like heat of the wreckage, the body was so badly decomposed as to make any reliable post mortem results unlikely.2025 February 19, Mike Lewis, “Tragedy at Moorgate”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 59, about the Moorgate tube crash

   Synonyms:

   autopsy, PM

2. (figuratively) Any investigation after the conclusion of an activity, particularly when said activity produces an unwanted outcome.
   • Each user-visible outage or SLA violation should be followed by a postmortem and conclude with implementation of the recommendations in the postmortem report.2014 September 3, Thomas A. Limoncelli, Strata R. Chalup, Christina J. Hogan, The Practice of Cloud System Administration (Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems; 2), Addison-Wesley, page...

   Synonyms:

   debriefing, AAR

3. (UK, obsolete, university slang) At Cambridge, a second examination for those who were "plucked" or failed in the first.

See all 6 meanings of post mortem