corpse
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
n.the dead body of a person.
n.the deceased body of a human being.
Simple“The police found a corpse in the abandoned house yesterday morning.”
In context“Medical students must learn to treat each corpse with respect during their anatomy dissections.”
UsageIn modern usage, 'corpse' almost exclusively refers to humans, while 'carcass' refers to animals.
- 02 C1 Advanced
v.to laugh suddenly when you are acting in a play or film and should be serious.
v.to break character by laughing uncontrollably during a theatrical performance or filming.
Simple“The actor started to corpse during the funeral scene because his co-star made a funny face.”
In context“It is notoriously difficult for comedians to avoid corpsing when their partners begin improvising unexpected lines during a live recording.”
UsageThe verb is usually intransitive, though it can be used transitively to mean 'making someone else laugh'.
Synonymsbreak character
“Iván Cepeda, the leftwing candidate beaten by De La Espriella in June’s election, wrote on X : “He strolls among the bags with the corpses.”
“He talks to one herder in the Spiti Valley of the Indian Himalayas who nonchalantly relates that he shot a snow leopard after it attacked his goats, and dumped its corpse in a river.”
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.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.