corpse-like

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See also: corpselike

English

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Adjective

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corpse-like (comparative more corpse-like, superlative most corpse-like)

  1. Alternative form of corpselike.
    • 1803 (date written), [Jane Austen], chapter XII, in Northanger Abbey; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. [], volume II, London: John Murray, [], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC, page 262:
      Every one capable of thinking felt the advantage of the idea, and in a moment (it was all done in rapid moments) Captain Benwick had resigned the poor corpse-like figure entirely to the brother’s care, and was off for the town with the utmost rapidity.
    • 1828, David Macbeth Moir, The Life of Mansie Wauch[1]:
      Magneezhy was in an awful case; if he had been already shot, he could not have looked more clay and corpse-like; []
    • 1842 May, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy”, in Graham’s Magazine, volume 20, number 5, page 259:
      [] a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
    • 1937, Henry Kuttner, The Salem Horror:
      A pseudopod of blackness elongated itself from the central mass and like a great tentacle clutched the corpse-like being, dragged it back to the pit and over the brink.
    • 1990, Patrick O'Brian, Post Captain:
      His body was dead white where it was not cruelly galled, bitten, rasped; his colourless face puffy, sweat-swollen, corpse-like, a tangled yellow beard covering his mouth; his eyes were red and pustulent.