Necrophiliacs

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals who feel a sexual attraction to dead bodies and seek sexual gratification from corpses
2. People with a paraphilia involving sexual desire directed at dead human bodies
3. Those whose sexual urges are aimed at deceased persons, a disorder recognized as a serious paraphilia

Etymology: Necrophiliacs is simply the plural of necrophiliac, so the story belongs to the singular. The word combines "necro-", from Greek "nekros" meaning "corpse" or "dead body", with "-philiac", from "philia", meaning love or attraction, and the suffix that marks a person who has such an attraction. Put together, the sense is a person drawn to the dead, a meaning that has very little to do with the gentler "-phile" words such as "bibliophile", where the love is directed at books. The formation is a modern scientific coinage built from classical Greek parts rather than a word the Greeks themselves used. Its pieces are ancient, but the compound itself was assembled in English-language medical and psychological writing, following the pattern of other terms ending in "-philia" and "-phile" for unusual attractions. Because it was built deliberately from known elements, its meaning is transparent: each part can be read off directly.