test-tube baby
3
4.2
- noun
- /ˈtɛstˌtub ˈbeɪbi/
- Informal
:
bebé de probeta
- Louise Brown was the first test-tube baby conceived through in vitro fertilization in 1978.
- the first test-tube baby
Like I think about, you know, throughout the years I've been alive, things like test tube babies, Dolly the sheep, right?
- Like I think about, you know, throughout the years I've been alive, things like test tube babies, Dolly the sheep, right?
- And in Brave New World, it's, it's mostly having to do with like, you know, the groups that people are in and test tube babies and things like that.
Examples
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Many couples turn to in vitro fertilization to conceive their own test-tube baby when natural methods fail.
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Almost three decades ago, on July 25, 1978, Louise Brown, the first "test-tube baby," was born.
Academic text (2007) -
In the decades since the first "test tube baby" was born, reproductive medicine has helped countless women conceive and bear children.
Academic text (2007) -
In 1978, the first "test tube baby" was born, and that technology gave many infertile couples the hope that they might finally be able to have a child of their own.
Blog text (6) -
After Robert G. Edwards and Patrick Steptoe developed the in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure that produced the first "test tube baby" in 1978, it didn't take long for ART usage to gain purchase in the medical world.
Academic text (2012) -
The breakthrough science behind the test-tube baby has helped countless families have children.
Surface Forms
Morphology
test-tube + baby
The compound 'test-tube' transparently evokes a laboratory tube (test + tube), so combining it with 'baby' yields the clear notion of a baby associated with laboratory conception. Even if a learner does not know the technical term 'in vitro fertilization', a B1 learner who knows 'test' and 'tube' can infer that the baby was conceived in a lab setting; many languages use a similar calque, supporting cross-linguistic transparency.
Etymology
Test-tube baby comes from the literal picture of a test-tube holding an embryo and a baby whose life began in a glass tube in a lab. Doctors fertilized the egg outside the mother's body and then put the embryo into her womb, so the phrase means 'a baby conceived in a lab and then placed in the mother's body'.