resurrection man
- noun
- /ˌrɛzəˈrɛkʃən mæn/
- NSFW
:
ladrón de cadáveres
- But Gray's only a resurrection man who robs graves to make a bit of money now and again.
Examples
-
The police arrested a notorious resurrection man who had been stealing bodies from local cemeteries.
-
The town was haunted by rumors of a resurrection man who was selling stolen corpses to surgeons.
-
If I worked on land, they'd call me a resurrection man, but since I work the river, they call me a fisher o' men.
Fiction book (1990) -
In Victorian times, a resurrection man might dig up graves to provide cadavers for medical schools.
Synonyms
3
9.9
A person who steals dead bodies from graves to sell to medical schools for study
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
Surface Forms
Morphology
A B1 learner who knows 'resurrection' (return to life) and 'man' (person) would most likely infer 'a man who brings the dead back to life' or a resurrected person, not someone who digs up corpses. The historical idiomatic sense 'body‑snatcher' is language-specific and cannot be derived from the literal constituents, so this MWE is opaque to learners.
Etymology
Resurrection man The noun resurrection man comes from the shocking picture of a man who dug up fresh graves and sold the dead to doctors, as if he made a false resurrection. That's why the phrase today means 'a person who steals dead bodies'.