morgue

[mawrg]

noun

1. a place in which bodies are kept, especially the bodies of victims of violence or accidents, pending identification or burial.

2. a reference file of old clippings, mats, books, etc., in a newspaper office.

3. the room containing such a reference file.

4. any place, as a room or file, where records, information, or objects are kept for unexpected but possible future use.

5. such records, information, or objects.

morgue

¹

/ mɔːɡ /

noun

1. another word for mortuary

2. informal,  a room or file containing clippings, files, etc, used for reference in a newspaper

morgue

²

/ mɔrɡ /

noun

1. superiority; haughtiness

Word History and Origins

Origin of morgue¹

1815–25; < French; name of building in Paris housing unidentified dead bodies

Word History and Origins

Origin of morgue¹

C19: from French la Morgue, a Paris mortuary

Example Sentences

On Friday, rescuers in Indonesia were struggling to reach the worst-affected areas of Sumatra island, while workers at a hospital in southern Thailand moved bodies into refrigerated trucks after the morgue exceeded capacity.

Read more on Barron's

"The morgue has exceeded its capacity, so we need more," Charn, a morgue official at Songkhla Hospital who only gave his first name, told AFP.

Read more on Barron's

At a morgue in central Colombia, a young woman mourned her brother, a 16-year-old who was kidnapped by guerrillas and killed in a government bombing last week, she said.

Read more on Barron's

Dr. Zoubi stored the cadavers in the hospital’s morgue for two weeks.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Other footage from within the hospital shows bodies laid out in what appears to be a hospital morgue.

Read more on BBC

Related Words

• funeral home