Etymology From Latin post (“afterwards”) + mortem, from mors (“death”).
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:
2
ManagementFiguratively 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 300:
After a serious delay there is often a post mortem on what happened, but this is usually in-house.2019 October, Ian Walmsley, “Cleaning up”, in Modern Railways, page 44:
1 more example
Grinspoon finishes with some sage advice on the best way to avoid greening out: "Keep the doses low and know yourself. If it happens to you, try to do a postmortem on what happened, like: 'Was there alcohol involved? Was there nicotine involved?' Was I overtired? Did I take five puffs when I usually take two puffs?'"2022 April 20, Ross Buchanan, “Why You Sometimes Feel Sick or Vomit After Smoking Weed”, in VICE, archived from the original on 16 Feb 2026:
3
UK, Obsolete At Cambridge, a second examination for those who were "plucked" or failed in the first.