lab rat
18
6.1
- noun
- /læb ræt/
- Offensive
:
conejillo de Indias
- Human beings are not lab rats.
- feel like a lab rat
- used as a lab rat
We're not Lab Rats, we're people with a disease.
- We're not Lab Rats, we're people with a disease.
- And he was, he was talking about, you know, first of all, Kanye is he's almost like a lab rat in a way.
- To get people to stick to the programme because humans, you know, like to eat and they suddenly don't like being treated like Lab Rats really.
- In either of those scenarios that would make sense that they're trying to teach these, these idiot, you know, Lab Rats us how to interact better.
Examples
-
ED, I feel like a lab rat.
Fiction book (2000) -
We're not Lab Rats, we're people with a disease.
-
Studying me like a lab rat.
Fiction book (2000) -
We are not your lab rats!
Blog text (9) -
I was a lab rat in the most literal sense of the word, and I am proud of that.
Blog text (17) -
At the same time, I noticed that my fellow lab rats were undergoing profound changes of their own.
Fiction book (2000) -
We, patients using DMTs, are still lab rats for the Rx companies.
Blog text (17) -
During the clinical trial, many participants felt like lab rats due to the invasive tests they had to undergo.
-
She described her experience in the experiment, saying, "I felt like a lab rat being monitored every step of the way."
-
In the new research study, volunteers were used as lab rats to test the effects of the experimental drug.
Synonyms
44
3.5
A person who takes part in an experiment so others can see the results
1
6.5
A person who takes an exam or takes part in an experiment
How Experimental
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound combines 'lab' (research facility) + 'rat' (the animal commonly used in experiments), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can readily infer a creature used for testing and, by extension, a person treated as a test subject. Contextual cues (e.g., workplace or experiment settings) disambiguate the sense from the other meaning of 'rat' (informer), making the figurative human use a predictable metaphorical extension.
Etymology
Lab rat comes from the picture of a real rat in a lab, kept in a cage and watched during experiments. So when people call someone a lab rat, they mean that person feels like a 'test subject' or someone others are trying things on.