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Glite Dictionary
rabbit test

rabbit test

1 9.9
A pregnancy test that uses a rabbit by injecting a woman's urine and checking its ovaries for changes
  • noun
  • /ˈræbɪt tɛst/
  • Archaic
translation icon : prueba del conejo
  • The rabbit test confirmed her pregnancy.

Examples

  • In the early 20th century, doctors used the rabbit test to determine if a woman was pregnant by injecting her urine into a rabbit.

  • In the 1940s, doctors sometimes used the rabbit test to determine pregnancy.

  • She read with fascination about the history of the rabbit test in medical diagnostics.

  • The rabbit test has been replaced by more humane and accurate methods today.

  • The doctor performed a rabbit test to check for pregnancy.

  • The rabbit test was once a common method for confirming pregnancy before modern urine tests were developed.

  • Many believe that the rabbit test is an outdated procedure since there are now more efficient ways to detect pregnancy.

Synonyms

pregnancy test
vsrabbit test
39 2.5

A test that shows if a woman is pregnant by checking urine or blood

is an early biological method using animal injection and ovary examination
Friedman test
vsrabbit test
  • Archaic
9.9

A test that injects a woman's urine into a female rabbit to see if the woman is pregnant

is the same early method but named differently historically

Surface Forms

rabbit test singular
rabbit tests plural

Morphology

rabbit + test

The compound literally names its parts, so a learner who knows 'rabbit' and 'test' can infer it refers to a test involving rabbits and thus gets a useful clue from the constituents. However, the precise conventional meaning—that it is an early pregnancy bioassay involving injection of urine and examination of rabbit ovaries—is specialized, historical, and not fully predictable from the words alone, making the expression only partially transparent.

Etymology

Rabbit test comes from an old medical procedure where doctors injected a woman's urine into a female rabbit and then checked the rabbit's body for changes. Because the method used live rabbits to show whether a woman was 'pregnant', people began calling the procedure the 'rabbit test'.