corpse
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Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.
corpse
- /kɔːps/ UK
- /koɹps/ US
- [kʰo̞ɹps] US
- /koːps/ Australia
- /kɔːɹps/
- /kɔːps/
Rhymes with -ɔː(ɹ)ps
Where it comes from
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 corpses · corps · corse
- A dead body, especially that of a human as opposed to an animal. 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, […]
- The dead body of any animal with flesh; the dead body of a vertebrate; a carcass. 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.
- A human body in general, whether living or dead.
Similar: anatomy, body, cadaver, carcass, carrion, corpse, corse, DB, dog meat, dust, lich, offal
verb corpses · corpsing · corpsed · corps · corse
- To laugh uncontrollably during a performance. The rest of the day and the week were spent blocking and learning the lines. The only drama was the predictable one of being ticked off for corpsing. Rupert was quite as bad as me when it came to giggling and the tea-party scene which took place between Rupert, David Parfitt, Piers Flint-Shipman and
- To cause another actor to do this.
