resurrectionist means one who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves; a graverobber.
Why “resurrectionist” is a great word
A person who illicitly disinterred corpses to supply medical schools with anatomical specimens, primarily in the 18th and 19th centuries. From resurrection (from Latin resurrectiō, "a rising again from the dead") + the agent suffix -ist; first attested in English 1770–80, coined alongside the term 'resurrection man'. Unlike a "graverobber," who plunders trinkets and gold, or a "revivalist," who seeks spiritual awakening, the resurrectionist traded solely in the newly dead for the scalpels of science. His was the midnight scrape of a shovel on frozen clay, the weight of a limp, shrouded form over a shoulder, the ghastly commerce conducted by lantern-light at the college gate—the word carries its own quiet blasphemy: resurrection without miracle, only transaction, the body raised not to glory but to the knife.
Etymology
From resurrection (“the act of rising from the dead and becoming alive again”) + -ist (“forms agents of cause; forms adherents of a belief”), coined alongside resurrection man.
noun
- One who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves; a graverobber.“One... who makes open profession of dealing in dead bodies and is well known by the name of the Resurrectionist.”
- A believer in a future bodily resurrection.“1830, A. Addis, Theory of Prophecy, Prol. p.xliv
Those who make the rest of the dead... to be the same with the remnant slain by the sword... to be consistent, ought to make the first resurrectionists the same with the armies in heaven.”
- One who resurrects an abandoned idea, practice, etc.; a revivalist.“We have no taste for enacting the part of literary resurrectionists.”
- One who sells repaired or reconditioned goods; a refurbisher.“Some of the habitual buyers [of ostrich feathers] have nicknames, and those who do a local business and buy for re-selling are known as ‘resurrectionists’.”
- A racehorse that (once or numerously) suddenly recovers its stamina midrace.“There is a class of horses called ‘resurrectionists’... and they either recover early form... or... become animated, when they were supposed to be gone altogether, with... life and vigour.”
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