body snatcher
3
9.9
- noun
- /ˈbɑdi ˈsnætʃər/
- NSFW
:
ladrón de cadáveres
- A body snatcher.
Examples
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A body snatcher will steal the dead, but a ghoul will steal just about anything, dead or other.
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It's a vicious gang of body snatchers that I don't want to cross.
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- It means body snatchers.
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This is like invasion of the body snatchers.
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One job turned us from body snatchers into ghouls.
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From the outside, it really does look like a "body-snatchers" sort of scenario, where as soon as you spawn, you lose all perspective and humor regarding people who don't want to spend every waking second enjoying your kids as much as you do.
Blog text (23) -
I feel like if we met somewhere in public, they would hiss and point at me like a body snatcher and sic a mob of fast-moving zombies on me.
Blog text (18) -
All the other rumors, such as her having sold the recipe for human meat pies to the body snatchers Burke and Hare, or her being responsible for the Methodist Meeting House Panic back in '75 when all those children were crushed...
Fiction book (2001) -
The source of that figure is a body called Quality Education Data, of whom I have never heard and who may, for aught I know, be staffed entirely by body-snatchers, thimble-riggers, accordion players, Republican senators, and other villains of the deepest dye.
Blog text (8) -
The police arrested a notorious body snatcher who had been stealing corpses for illegal trade.
Synonyms
1
9.9
A person who digs up graves to sell bodies
1
9.4
A person who takes bodies or valuable things from graves without permission to sell
1
9.9
A person who illegally digs up dead bodies to sell to doctors for study
A person who steals dead bodies from graves to sell them to doctors
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a straightforward compound of 'body' (a dead person) and 'snatcher' (one who seizes or steals), so a learner who knows both words can easily infer it denotes someone who steals bodies. The agentive formation and literal imagery match common cross-linguistic patterns for grave-robbing, making the meaning immediately recoverable without prior exposure.
Etymology
The noun body snatcher comes from a real, shocking picture: people who dug up and 'snatched' dead bodies from graves — the snatchers — to sell to medical schools. That's why body snatcher now means someone who illegally takes dead bodies for 'medical research' or sale.