corpse means A dead body, especially that of a human as opposed to an animal. It carries an Arena rating of 1515, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, corpse ranks #433 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #765 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,308 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #1,345 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words.
corpse is pronounced /kɔːps/.
Why “corpse” is a great word
The physical remains of a human being after life has departed. From Middle English corse, from Old French cors ("body"), from Latin corpus ("body"), from the Proto-Indo-European root *kwrep- ("body, form, appearance"), with the 'p' reinserted in the 15th century under the influence of the original Latin spelling. Unlike "carcass," which denotes the dead body of a non-human animal, especially one slaughtered for meat or found decaying, or "cadaver," which carries the clinical detachment of dissection and scientific study, "corpse" preserves the human weight of mortality. It is the covered shape on the pavement awaiting the coroner's van, the pale stillness of a loved one's hand grown cold, the absolute silence that follows the final exhalation—reminding us that the body, which once housed all of a person's longing and laughter, remains when the person does not.
Etymology
From Middle English, from earlier corse, from Old French cors, from Latin corpus (“body”). Displaced native English likam and lich. The ⟨p⟩ was inserted due to the original Latin spelling. Doublet of corps and corpus, and distantly of riff (via Proto-Indo-European). The verb sense derives from the notion of being unable to control laughter while acting as dead body.
noun
- A dead body, especially that of a human as opposed to an animal.e.g.“I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, / And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, / I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, […]” — 1865, Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, in Sequel to Drum-Taps: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d and other poems:
- The dead body of any animal with flesh; the dead body of a vertebrate; a carcass.e.g.“Cantharidin, although readily decomposed by chemical agents, is so permanent in the body that it has been detected in the corpse of a cat eighty-four days after death.” — 1885, Alexander Wynter Blyth, Poisons, Their Effects and Detection: A Manual for the Use of Analytical Chemists and Experts, volume I, New York: William Wood and Co., page 430:
- A human body in general, whether living or dead.
verb
- To laugh uncontrollably during a performance.
- To cause another actor to do this.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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