What does "microtome" mean?

A special instrument that produces very thin slices of plant and animal tissues, for later examination by light microscope or electron microscope.

Microtome

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A special instrument that produces very thin slices of plant and animal tissues, for later examination by light microscope or electron microscope.
"The first microtome was constructed for John Hill, to make the specimens described in his book on the structure of timber (1770)."
2
scientific instrument that cuts thin slices of something for microscopic examination wordnet

Verb

"The first microtome was constructed for John Hill, to make the specimens described in his book on the structure of timber (1770)."

Could be construed as either micro + -tome (“instrument for cutting”) or micro- + tome.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.