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.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

body count (plural body counts)

1. The number of persons or bodies counted as casualties, especially fatalities, or victims. [from c. 1962]
   • 1968 February 1, “Authorization for Military Procurement, Research and Development, Fiscal Year 1969, and Reserve Strength”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services, page 16:

     Senator BYRD of West Virginia. Why do we minimize our losses as apparently we do? I find it extremely difficult to believe that there have been 6,200 VC and NVA killed by body count, whereas we have only lost 193 Americans and 335 ARVN troops.

   • 1993 July 16, “Tailhook defendant rails at accusers”, in UPI Archives:

     Navy Lt. Cole Cowden, accused of indecent assault and conduct unbecoming an officer at the 1991 Tailhook convention, says he is the target of a quest for a 'body count' in the investigation and not because he did anything wrong at the annual convention of Naval aviators.

   • 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.

   • 2018 May 11, “Colorado is a battlefield in the new newspaper wars. As the body count rises, what can we do?”, in The Colorado Independent:

     On Tuesday, three stories that led the home page of Columbia Journalism Review were about Colorado, a state that has become a battlefield in the new newspaper wars— where journalists fight their hedge-fund owners.

   • 2021 March 15, Edward B. Westermann, Drunk on Genocide. Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 89:

     In the case of the liquidation of the Slonim ghetto in September 1942, police-men “bragged about the number of women they had abused in this manner and tried to outdo one another.” Much like keeping score of one’s body count, the numbers of rapes served individual perpetrators as a personal record of their own virility and masculinity, and as a means of group bonding.

   • 2022 October 1, Elisabeth Armstrong, “Here and There: A Story of Women’s Internationalism, 1948-1953”, in Carolien Stolte, Su Lin Lewis, editors, The Lives of Cold War Afro-Asianism (Global Connections: Routes and Roots; 4), Leiden: Leiden University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 25:

     The novelty of women’s public protest shifted from a shocking sight of women filling the streets to a body count. Women protested their living conditions of impoverishment, and demanded their rights as citizens (not subjects) of India, and they were killed.

   • 2023 February 27, Luke Munn, “8chan's Playful Hate”, in Red Pilled - The Allure of Digital Hate, Bielefeld: Bielefeld University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 37:

     As the body count rose, Tarrant quickly became a hero who had achieved a “new high score,” surpassing the former record holder Seung-Hui Cho of Virginia Tech. Tarrant attained instant cult status in the community.

2. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (slang) The total number of sexual partners of a given individual. [a. 2006]

   Synonyms: notch count, mileage

   Hyponym: cock count

   • 2010 September 11, Julie Myerson, “Review: The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women by James Ellroy”, in The Guardian:

     "The numbers don't matter. It's not a body count, a scratch-pad list or a boast." So James Ellroy begins this very list-like and unavoidably boastful memoir of a lifetime ....

   • 2021 December 14, Karen Kellock, UNDERHANDEDLY CLEVER, CHAMPION GUIDES, →ISBN, page 27:

     [He wants] sex even if he has the woman he wants, just to increase his body count. He strings you along just for the sex. Tell you what you wanna hear but never follow thru, heck! Some modern women go so far as paying his bills and car payments.

   • 2023 September 21, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, The Holistic You: Integrating Your Family, Finances, Faith, Friendships, and Fitness, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 155:

     […] whether or not a woman should disclose her body count to her new boyfriend. Body count, for those readers who have enjoyed an enviably sheltered life, is the contemporary term for the number of men with whom she has shared physical intimacy. These women seem to experience considerable discomfort when asked about their "body count."

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:body count.

References

• “body count”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.