Dictionary

corse en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /kɔːs/ (UK)
• /kɔɹs/ (General-American)

Etymology

From Middle English cors, from Old French cors, from Latin corpus (“body”). Doublet of corpus and corpse, and distantly of riff. Compare corset.

Meanings

1. (obsolete) A (living) body.
   • that lewd ribauld with vile lust aduaunst / Layd first his filthy hands on virgin cleene, / To spoile her daintie corse so faire and sheene […] 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
2. (archaic) A dead body, a corpse.
   • [W]hat may this meane, / That thou, dead corſe, againe in compleate ſteele, / Reuiſſits thus the glimſes of the Moone, / Making night hideous, and vve fooles of nature, / So horridely to ſhake our diſpoſition, / VVith thoughts beyond the reaches of our ſoules? c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shake-speare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: […] (First Quarto), London: […] [Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and Iohn Trundell, published 1603, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv], signature C3, recto:
   • chorus. Thine eyes will tell thee!—Yonder, see the lifeless corse. The Scene opens and discovers the corse of the Queen, her attendants weeping around it. creon. Alas! O new calamity! What more / Of ill hath Fate in store for me? Here, here / Within these arms I clasp my lifeless son: / And yonder see my wife a bleeding corse! [1845], Sophocles, translated by [William Bartholomew], An Imitative Version of the Choruses and the Melo-Dramatic Dialogue, with a Synopsis of the Scenes in Sophocles’ Tragedy Antigone; […], London: Joseph Bonsor, […], page 21:
   • 'Twas then attested that he had been found / At no great distance from the bleeding corse 1838, Thomas Eagles, Brendallah, A Poem, Whittaker & Co., section LXIII, page 112:
   • Ambrosio beheld before him that once noble and majestic form, now become a corse, cold, senseless, and disgusting. 1796, Matthew Lewis, The Monk, Folio Society, published 1985, page 214:

Forms

Deriveds

corsepresent