petri dish

noun

pe·​tri dish ˈpē-trē- 

variants or less commonly Petri dish

plural petri dishes also Petri dishes

1

: a small shallow usually round dish of thin glass or plastic with a loose cover used especially for growing cells or microorganisms on a supportive medium (such as agar combined with nutrients)

… the protein extracted from human cancer cells could stimulate the growth of blood vessels in experiments with chicken embryos and tumor cells growing in petri dishes.

—Tina Hesman

Unfortunately, most laboratories can diagnose tuberculosis with certainty, or exclude it, only by placing sputum in a petri dish and waiting to see if the bacterium grows …

—The New York Times

… they found that the compound, sulforaphane, fights cancer in petri dishes.

—Doug Levy

2

: something (such as a place or situation) that fosters development

Of course being there for your team tends to contaminate your team. Our radio studio is currently a petri dish of disease.

—Matt Heath

"We view universities as a community's most promising petri dish for innovation," said Abby Taubner …

—Alex Wittenberg

MTV's The Real World, which sends seven attractive young strangers to spend six months turning their luxury housing into a Petri dish of sexual, racial, and interpersonal tension, has been running since 1992.

—Francine Prose

Examples of petri dish in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Bars are a microcosm: a cluster of random people and their random problems fermenting in a petri dish. —Brandi California, SPIN, 1 July 2024

One concerning scenario would be if avian flu started spreading among pigs, a species that is genetically even closer to humans than cows and cats, and has long been considered a petri dish for dangerous pathogens to evolve to better infect humans. —Dylan Scott, Vox, 1 July 2024

And the failure rate of dog clones is higher than that of many other mammals; for some reason, many dog embryos in petri dishes don’t survive past about eight cells. —Alexandra Horowitz, The New Yorker, 24 June 2024

From an overhead shelf, Santos retrieved two petri dishes that each contained five beige moth larvae. —Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker, 13 June 2024

Word History

Etymology

Julius R. Petri †1921 German bacteriologist

First Known Use

1892, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

Petri dish

noun

Pe·​tri dish

ˌpē-trē-

: a small shallow dish of thin glass or plastic with a loose cover used especially for cultures of bacteria

Medical Definition

petri dish

noun

pe·​tri dish

variants also Petri dish

ˈpē-trē- 

: a small shallow usually round dish of thin glass or plastic with a loose cover used especially for growing cells on a supportive medium (such as agar combined with nutrients)