resurrection man
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See also: resurrection-man
English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
resurrection (“the act of rising from the dead and becoming alive again”) + man
Noun[edit]
resurrection man (plural resurrection men)
- (euphemistic, historical) A man who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves; a graverobber.
- 1781, “R. King”, in Compl. Mod. London Spy, section 106:
- Persons (under the name of resurrection-men) continue their business, getting from 1 guinea to 5 or 6, according to the value set upon the corpse they take up.
- 1910, Encyclopædia Britannica, I. 937/2:
- Earlier exhumations seem to have caused very little popular concern;... but later... the trade of ‘resurrection man’ became commoner, and attracted the lowest dregs of the vicious classes.