Meaning & use

Petri dish

noun·Academic

A shallow, transparent, lidded dish used in laboratories to culture cells, bacteria, or other microorganisms.

See it in a sentence

The technician placed a bacterial sample in a Petri dish to observe its growth.

Students in the biology lab grew mold colonies in labeled Petri dishes.

A note on using this word

Often misspelled 'petry dish'; it is named after German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri and capitalized as a proper adjective.

Words with a similar meaning

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