guinea pig
Học thuậtThân thiện
Definition
- Noun:
- A small, tailless rodent often kept as a pet: A stout-bodied, domesticated rodent of the species Cavia porcellus, frequently kept as a household pet.
- An experimental subject: A person or thing used as the subject of research, testing, or observation.
Usage Examples
- Noun (Animal):
- My daughter loves her guinea pig.
- Guinea pigs are herbivores and need plenty of hay.
- Noun (Experimental Subject):
- Volunteers acted as guinea pigs for the new vaccine trial.
- The team used the prototype as a guinea pig to test the software's limits.
Advanced Usage
- "to be a guinea pig": To serve as a test subject, often voluntarily.
- I agreed to be a guinea pig for my friend's culinary experiment.
- "human guinea pig": Explicitly refers to a person used in medical or scientific research.
- Ethical guidelines are crucial when someone becomes a human guinea pig.
Variants and Related Words
- Cavy: The biological family name for rodents including the guinea pig.
- Test subject: A more general term for any person or animal used in an experiment.
- Lab rat: A colloquial term for an experimental subject, drawing a parallel to another common research animal.
Synonyms
- Subject (as in a research subject).
- Experimental subject.
- Test case.
Related Idioms
- "To feel like a guinea pig": To feel that one is being used for testing purposes, often without full consent or consideration.
- With all these new office policies, the staff feel like guinea pigs.
Noun
- stout-bodied nearly tailless domesticated cavy; often kept as a pet and widely used in research
- a person who is subjected to experimental or other observational procedures; someone who is an object of investigation
- the subjects for this investigation were selected randomly
- the cases that we studied were drawn from two different communities