Corseted

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Being attired in a garment intended to shape and confine the midsection while emphasizing the bust area
2. Dressed in an outfit that employs a restrictive piece to create a desired silhouette and enhance the waist
3. Having the torso tightly encased in a garment designed to shape the waist and support the bust

Etymology: "Corseted" is simply the past participle and adjective built from "corset" plus the suffix "-ed," which turns a noun into a description of something that has been fitted with, or characterised by, that thing. A corset is a close-fitting, stiffened garment worn around the torso, and the word "corset" itself comes from the Old French "cors," meaning body, which is also the ancestor of "corpse" and "corps" through the same Latin root "corpus." So a corseted person is, in the most literal sense, a person whose body has been wrapped and shaped. The suffix carries a long ancestry. Its distant forms trace back to Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic endings that marked past actions, and in Old English it appeared as "-ed" and "-od" before settling into the form used today. Its history is more interesting than its present job suggests: it is one of the oldest working parts of English grammar, still quietly turning nouns into adjectives almost a thousand years later.