carcass
/ˈkɑːkəs
/(British also carcase)
noun
1The dead body of an animal: she saw the mud-covered carcass of a sheep...
- Filth, carcasses of dead animals, garbage and polythene floating on the water and piling up at the embankments narrates the horrific story about the present condition of the stream.
- Possessing keen vision, the vulture can see the carcasses of dead animals and the movements and activities of other scavengers, birds, or mammals from great distances.
- Often, during natural disasters, mosquitoes and dead animal carcasses may present disease problems.
1.1The trunk of an animal such as a cow, sheep, or pig, for cutting up as meat: the carcass has a high proportion of meat to bone...
- A prototype of a newly patented device tested at a large midwestern beef packing plant can successfully detect small amounts of fecal matter on meat animal carcasses.
- To get as much meat from animal carcasses as possible, slaughterhouses use two methods that may contaminate meat with spinal cord tissue.
- Stowing away on a meat truck, animal carcasses swung from hooks.
1.2The remains of a cooked bird after all the edible parts have been removed.Stir the red wine into the roasting tin, add the carcass and cook in the oven for 10 minutes, then remove from the oven but do not switch it off....
- Roughly chop the remaining carcasses and set aside.
- Reserve the remainder of the carcasses for the sauce.
1.3 humorous A person’s body, living or dead: my obsession will last while there’s life in this old carcass...
- Looking back, he saw ten men-six on horseback-surrounding the motionless carcass that was the old man.
- It's now clear to me that the Alpha Male is a dinosaur, dragging his hopeless old carcass across a desolate desert and finding no water, no sustenance and is almost history.
- It is unarguable that 40 is older than 20, and I guess quoting Eliot says it all: how last century can a creaking old ague-ridden carcass get?
Synonyms
body, person, self;
backside
North American informal butt
British vulgar slang arse
North American vulgar slang ass
1.4The structural framework of a building, ship, or piece of furniture.The road into Nablus circuits the gaping carcasses of buildings that, I am told, have been destroyed by tanks; the road itself is cracked by the passage of heavily armoured tanks....
- It's like the heat, the flies, the carcasses of buildings, the broken streets and the haphazard walls coming up out of nowhere all over the city… it has become a part of life.
- In the end, they used two high-definition cameras to film the shores covered in ship carcasses.
1.5The remains of something: automotive carcasses stripped of radios, hubcaps and even body panels...
- The fact that Naik still gives it primacy is appropriate, since we have persisted in dragging this rotting carcass of a social structure with us into the new century.
- Once a mining center, Goldfield is now a crumbling carcass, a living ghost town of 300 people.
- Charred carcasses of cars were tossed in deep craters along entire blocks that were pulverized.
Origin
Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French carcois, variant of Old French charcois; in later use from French carcasse; of unknown ultimate origin.