laboratory

noun — 2 senses

laboratory

noun

UK /ləˈbɒɹət(ə)ɹi/ · US /ˈlæb(ə)ɹəˌtɔɹi/

Etymology Borrowed from Medieval Latin labōrātōrium.

1

A room, building or institution equipped for scientific research, experimentation or analysis.

2

A place where chemicals, drugs or microbes are prepared or manufactured.

  • Again she read the passage that had riveted her attention; and, rising from her seat, carried the still open volume, and laid it on a slab by the furnace in the laboratory: it was a celebrated treatise on poisons, written in the fifteenth century.1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Laboratory”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 325:
  • [Isaac Newton] was obsessed with alchemy. He spent hours copying alchemical recipes and trying to replicate them in his laboratory. He believed that the Bible contained numerological codes.2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:
Synonyms
lab, laboratorium
Derived terms
biolaboratory, collaboratory, hot laboratory, interlaboratory, intralaboratory, laboratorian, laboratorily, laboratorist, laboratory assistant, laboratory coat, laboratoryful, laboratory mouse, laboratory rat, laboratoryware, language laboratory, multilaboratory, nonlaboratory

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.