body count

English

Alternative forms

• bodycount

Etymology

Coined by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War in the sense "number of killed enemy combatants", in 1962 according to Merriam-Webster. From the late 2010s, it has also come to be used in denoting the number of sexual partners that an individual has had.

Noun

body count (plural body counts)

1. The number of persons or bodies counted as casualties, especially of those killed.
   • 2017 January 12, Jesse Hassenger, “A literal monster truck is far from the stupidest thing about Monster Trucks”, in The Onion AV Club‎^[1]:

     In addition to racking up what looks like a substantial offscreen body count, the movie at one point offers an eight-second introduction for a sleazy used-car salesman character for the sole purpose of justifying Tripp and Creech laying waste to his inventory.

2. (slang) The total number of sexual partners of a given individual.

   Hyponyms: notch count (with the vagina affecting the metric), cock count (with the penis affecting the metric), mileage (with the penis affecting the metric if tallied for a vagina-owner)