corsage

[kawr-sahzh]

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR corsage ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

a small bouquet worn at the waist, on the shoulder, on the wrist, etc., by a woman.

the body or waist of a dress; bodice.

Origin of corsage

1475–85; < Middle French: bodily shape (later: bust, bodice, corsage), equivalent to cors body (< Latin corpus) + -age -age

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for corsage

pot, wreath, garland, vase, nosegay, posy, festoon, spray, boutonniere, buttonhole, lei, flower, sentiment, bouquet, blossom, verse, motto

Examples from the Web for corsage

Contemporary Examples of corsage

Instead of a corsage, he brought me a plastic duck he'd stolen from a Chi Chi's restaurant.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Rednecks and Their Unjustly Unsung Kin
Allison Glock
August 23, 2014

Historical Examples of corsage

Then from inside her corsage she brought out and held to Sidney a letter.
K
Mary Roberts Rinehart
The corsage was then put on and—wonderful to relate—it fitted her to perfection.
The Masked Bridal
Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
And compelled to slip back to the ballroom, she crushed the note into her corsage.
The Golden Face
William Le Queux
Hastily she thrust the message in her corsage and quietly left the room.
The Slave of Silence
Fred M. White
The gypsy's corsage slipped through his hands like the skin of an eel.
Notre-Dame de Paris
Victor Hugo

British Dictionary definitions for corsage

corsage

noun

a flower or small bunch of flowers worn pinned to the lapel, bosom, etc, or sometimes carried by women

the bodice of a dress

Word Origin for corsage

C15: from Old French, from cors body, from Latin corpus

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for corsage

late 15c., "size of the body," from Old French cors "body" (see corpse); the meaning "body of a woman's dress, bodice" is from 1818 in fashion plates translated from French; 1843 in a clearly English context. Sense of "a bouquet worn on the bodice" is 1911, American English, apparently from French bouquet de corsage "bouquet of the bodice."