body snatcher
Noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002
Noun
body snatcher (plural body snatchers)
- (slang, jocular, pejorative, obsolete) One who makes arrests, such as a bailiff or policeman.
- 1778 August 19, Public Advertiser
- They proved to be two of those Body-Snatchers, called hired Constables, who were patrolling the Fields.
- 1877, R. Rae, Newport, 40
- Look here, my body-snatchers, you have unlawfully abridged the liberty of one of the sons of the sovereign State of New York!
- 1778 August 19, Public Advertiser
- One who abducts or controls another's body, such as a slaver, psychic, or human resources agent.
- 1852, B.R. Hall, Frank Freeman's Barber Shop, xiv. 252
- A black woman told Carrie not to say master and missis, because you were body-snatchers and slave-drivers.
- 1894 September, Harper's Magazine, 581/2
- Girls who can't let a man go by without reaching out for him. That's what I call them—body snatchers.
- 1961 June, Fortune, 129/1
- McCulloch had no compunction about using these executive recruiting firms. They were, he knew, often derisively called ‘body snatchers’, ‘head hunters’, ‘flesh peddlers’, and ‘pirates’.
- 1994 August 9, Associated Press, Newswire
- South claims hundreds abducted by North Korea's ‘body snatchers’.
- 2000, C. Golden, Head Games, 166
- ‘What are you looking at?’
- ‘An alien body snatcher who stole my partner and took her place.’
- 1852, B.R. Hall, Frank Freeman's Barber Shop, xiv. 252
- (historical) One who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves, a resurrection man.
- 1819, J. H. Vaux, New Vocab. Flash Lang. in Memoirs
- Body-snatcher, a stealer of dead bodies from churchyards; which are sold to the surgeons and students in anatomy.
- 1910, Encyclopædia Britannica, I. 937/2:
- So emboldened and careless did these body-snatchers become... that they no longer confined themselves to pauper graves.
- 1819, J. H. Vaux, New Vocab. Flash Lang. in Memoirs
- (in particular) A graverobber who steals bodies or body parts.
- 2008 March 19, Daily Record (Glasgow), 9:
- The head of a ring of bodysnatchers who stole the bones of broadcaster Alistair Cooke pleaded guilty yesterday.
- 2008 March 19, Daily Record (Glasgow), 9:
- (alien) pod person
- (corpse-stealer) resurrection man, resurrectionist
- Italian: ultracorpo
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002