necrophiliac

American  

[nek-ruh-fil-ee-ak] / ˌnɛk rəˈfɪl iˌæk /

Also necrophilic

noun

1. Psychiatry. a person who is sexually excited by or attracted to dead bodies.

   The serial killer was also a known necrophiliac.

2. a person who is excited or fascinated by death or killing.

   Those who embrace violence, whether in the form of acts of terrorism or acts of war, are necrophiliacs.

---

adjective

1. Psychiatry. having or relating to a sexual attraction to dead bodies.

   He had a disturbing tendency toward necrophiliac fantasies.

2. excited or fascinated by death or killing.

   I don't approve of that publisher's extreme, often necrophiliac and paranoid array of publications.

Etymology

Origin of necrophiliac

necrophili(a) ( def. ) + -ac ( def. )

Example Sentences

Its follow-up, 2011’s WE, in which Andrea Riseborough played Wallis Simpson, was also critically panned, with Bradshaw describing it as “one long humourless and necrophiliac swoon at the Windsors’ supposed tragi-romantic glamour”.

From The Guardian • Mar. 14, 2018

Related: Nicolas Winding Refn: society has become necrophiliac as the internet merges death and beauty What Refn has done in The Neon Demon, however, is to wholly demote the focus offered to his male characters.

From The Guardian • May 20, 2016

On the London premiere of Let It Be, the Guardian's theatre critic Michael Billington called the musical "an exercise in faintly necrophiliac nostalgia".

From The Guardian • Jul. 17, 2013

The Guardian's Michael Billington damned "The Bodyguard" as "one more example of the necrophiliac musical morbidly attracted to a cinematic corpse."

From Seattle Times • Dec. 6, 2012

Hitchcock had earlier managed, in Suspicion and Notorious, the trick of making Cary Grant a threatening, unsympathetic figure; later, in Vertigo he would locate aspects of a necrophiliac stalker in Jimmy Stewart.

From Time • Mar. 30, 2011