corpse

American  

[kawrps] / kɔrps /

noun

• corpses
  plural

1. a dead body, usually of a human being.

   Synonyms:

   cadaver

2. something no longer useful or viable.

   rusting corpses of old cars.

3. Obsolete. a human or animal body, whether alive or dead.

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corpse British  

/ kɔːps /

noun

1. a dead body, esp of a human being; cadaver

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verb

1. slang theatre to laugh or cause to laugh involuntarily or inopportunely while on stage

Synonym Usage

See body.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• corpses
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of corpse

First recorded in 1225–75; Middle English corps; originally spelling variant of cors ( see corse) but the p is now sounded

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Explanation

Another name for a dead body is corpse. You might hear the word on TV crime shows, but a corpse doesn't have to be a crime victim, just any lifeless body. The words corpse and "corps" are often confused, and with good reason — both came from the Latin word corpus, meaning "body," and up until the 19th Century, both referred to a dead person. Around that time, the word with the "e" at the end was established as the word for a person's remains, while the other spelling was relegated to a "body" of people working together or in a military division, and very much alive!

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

corpse corpses

Instead it’s a tender ballad in which the schoolmistressy secretary Hester Leggatt sings an imagined love letter to be planted on a corpse to add verisimilitude to the dead man’s manufactured life story.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026

There, at a tombstone whose name is illegible, the inspector and his crew find a corpse in a tweed suit.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026

In the meantime, there’s a lot of unwieldy comic commotion involving a missing corpse, a tweaking, naked Dwight and enough insipid TV sibling bickering to clog the airwaves for a decade.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026

A crowd then gathered around the corpse, singing a dirge in a local Swahili dialect.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026

Two of the raiders lifted the ablutionist’s corpse as Lateef untangled the ankle from Rostam’s harness.

From "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri

The English flee, the French strip the corpses in the lower border, and the ragged-edged Tapestry ends as suddenly and violently as Anglo-Saxon England.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026

With many corpses badly disfigured, volunteers said several families had claimed the same body.

From Barron's ● Aug. 30, 2026

Burials must be strictly supervised as the virus spreads by contact with bodily fluids, meaning corpses can remain contagious.

From Barron's ● Aug. 24, 2026

Sometimes known as "Doctor Death", he became famous for developing a technique called plastination, by which fluids and fatty tissue in corpses are replaced by rubber and polymers.

From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026

As he walked south of Central Park, he found there were no corpses and no rats.

From "The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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Related Words

• body
• cadaver
• carcass
• remains

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