lab rat

Definitions

1. A student or employee who spends a great deal of time working in a laboratory.
   idiomatic
2. A person or group used as the subject of an experiment or test, especially unwillingly or unwittingly.
   idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“As a graduate student, she loved being a “lab rat,” Dr. Blackburn said, adding, “I was just really focused on the science, the science, the science.””

“Tests were done on me that you can't even imagine⟳. For years. Cerberus did them. They tortured me. They used me as a damn lab rat. And now you're teaming up with them like⟳ they're any other merc band?”

“Looking back at the unprecedented meddling of European powers in his country's politics amid the Euro crisis — a series of events that led to his fall⟳ as well as Greece becoming the first country in the zone to be forced to accept⟳ painful austerities in exchange⟳ for bailout loans — Papandreou told TIME, "I think⟳ it couldn't have⟳ been avoided. We were a lab rat, an experiment⟳."”

“This time, Vincent . . . became an unwitting lab rat for a vaccine that turned soldiers into hyperaggressive killing machines.”

CEFR level