Dictionary

rigor mortis en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Etymology

Learned borrowing from New Latin rigor mortis (literally “stiffness of death”). First attested in 1842.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) Temporary stiffness of the body's muscles and joints following death.
   • […]an unpublished writer who, for all his ambition and flashes of talent, had not been trained in the rigours (nor rigor mortises, for that matter) of a university education. 1991, Bruce Bennett, Spirit in Exile: Peter Porter and His Poetry, Oxford University Press, page 56:
   • Such are the principal phenomena observed during that form of contraction which I conceive to be analogous to the rigor mortis... 1840, Royal Society of London, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, page 491:
   • Then we carried in poor Austin from the yard. His muscles were set as hard as a board in the most exaggerated rigor mortis, while the contraction of the fibres had drawn his mouth into a hard sardonic grin. 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
   • Its wood can neither be carved nor used for the making of the furniture because of the volatility of those characteristics of the nutrients it has sucked which come from innumerable varieties of rigor mortises. 2009, A.S.Q., The Anatomy of Grief, AuthorHouse, page 109:
   • Instead, Tender Buttons destabilizes persistent syntactic arrangements and lexical rigor mortises to assert that “certainly glittering is handsome and convincing,” glittering a radiant process of flux and variance. 2010, Dean Young, The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction, Graywolf Press, pages 66–67:

Forms

Deriveds

rigor · break rigor · rigored · brickor mortis

Synonyms

death-stiffness · rigor

Translations (28)

hu hullamerevség (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · ms kekejuran mayat (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · id rigor mortis (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · es rigidez cadavérica (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · sv likstelhet (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · fa جمود نعشی (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · ru тру́пное окочене́ние (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · da dødsstivhed (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · tr ölüm katılığı (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · fr rigor mortis (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · pt rigor mortis (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · cmn 屍僵 /尸僵 (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · el νεκρική ακαμψία (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · egy M22-M22-n:n-nw-W-A7 (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · de Leichenstarre (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · de Totenstarre (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · tr ölü katılığı (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · nl lijkstijfheid (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · fr rigidité cadavérique (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · id kaku mayat (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · ms rigor mortis (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · pt rigidez cadavérica (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · es rigor mortis (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · it rigor mortis (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · ja 死後硬直 (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · fi kuolonkankeus (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · ro rigiditate cadaverică (temporary stiffness of the body following death) · pl stężenie pośmiertne (temporary stiffness of the body following death)

rigor mortis en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Etymology

Learned borrowing from New Latin rigor mortis (literally “stiffness of death”). First attested in 1842.

Meanings

1. To stiffen the muscles and joints with, or as if with, rigor mortis.
   • Let the old woman point until her finger rigor mortises and she has to bandage it in the daytime and pretend it got caught between the rocks, grinding corn into meal. 2000, Stephen Graham Jones, The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong, Fiction Collective Two, →ISBN, page 99:
   • Fingers were rigor mortised to triggers. 1996, A. A. Gill, Sap Rising, Black Swan, Transworld Publishers, published 1997, page 131:
   • At McCray’s, we had to lift Pa off Flash in the folded position he had rigor mortised to. 2017, Albert Bennetti, In a Buffalo Robe, Archway Publishing, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN:
   • Hands / Responding to bold brain waves, / Hiding feelings, / Twiddling facts, / Dating destinies, / Doting on things, / Withering in death traps, / Snapping brittle, / Folding stiffly / When movement ceases / And rigor mortises the joints. 1972, James R. McCready, The Seasons Calling: Haiku & Western-Style Verse, Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., →ISBN:
   • As Olive was in the kitchen making some tea I asked what kind of louse the host was. “The kind you like to see laying out on a mortuary slab rigor mortising before the introduction.” 1964, Israel Segal, Out of the Womb, Times Press, page 177:
   • Forget rigor mortising, clutter of taxidermy. 2009, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, Persea Books, page 189:

Forms