Corpsed

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. A state in which a body is lifeless and devoid of consciousness, especially pertaining to someone who has died
2. the condition of flesh that has ceased to function and is now inactive or no longer alive
3. an instance where an individual has expired, leaving behind a corpse that signifies the end of life

Etymology: The past tense "corpsed" comes from the theatre, where it describes an actor who breaks down laughing on stage and can no longer keep a straight face. The joke is that an actor who should be lying still as a dead body, playing a corpse in a scene, cannot stop shaking with laughter, so the stillness the role demands falls apart. The noun behind it has a longer and more unusual history. "Corpse" came into Middle English as "corse", borrowed from Old French "cors", which came from Latin "corpus", meaning "body". English already had its own words for a dead body, "lich" and "likam", but these were displaced by the French-derived form. The "p" was added later to match the Latin spelling, which is why the word now looks different from its French ancestor. "Corps" and "corpus" are its doublets, meaning the same word that entered English through a different route.

Synonyms: deceased, expired, dead, lifeless, departed

Antonyms: alive, living, animated, vital, breathing