See Also: out-of-body(dictionary)
body of rib(medicine)
fat body(medicine)
L-D body(medicine)
LE body(medicine)
nu body(medicine)
body(1)(dictionary)
R body(medicine)
body bag(dictionary)
X body(medicine)

body(1) (iou)



body noun.

I. The material frame of people or animals.
The physical frame of a human or an animal; the whole material organism. OE.
J. Steinbeck Then down from the car the weary people climbed, and stretched stiff bodies. D. Attenborough Elongated animals with segmented bodies.
b. The corporeal nature of a human; flesh as opp. to soul or spirit. ME.
Pope All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. Sir W. Scott While we are yet in the body.
A corpse. ME.
Shakespeare King John At Worcester must his body be interr'd. Tennyson In the ghastly pit..a body was found.
Christian Church. The consecrated bread used in the Eucharist. ME.
An individual, a person. Now chiefly colloq. ME.
anybody, everybody, nobody, somebody.
Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor 'Tis a great charge to come under one body's hand. F. Weldon She was a plump, busy little body, with a husband two years dead.
The material being of a human; the person. LME.
Book of Common Prayer With this Ring I thee wed..with my body I thee worship.
II. The main portion.
The main part of the human or animal frame, apart from the head and limbs; the trunk. OE.
Shakespeare 3 Henry VI But when the fox hath once got in his nose, He'll soon find means to make the body follow.
b. The main stem of a tree, plant, etc. ME.
The main portion of something as distinct from subordinate parts or appendages, as the nave of a church, hull of a ship, load-bearing part of a vehicle, central text of a document, etc. (Foll. by of.) OE.
C. Cotton The body of the Emblem was a figure of the Duke himself. A. Trollope The body of the will was in the handwriting of the widow, as was also the codicil. E. Blishen Once inside we hurled ourselves into the body of the cinema.
The majority, the larger part of anything. (Foll. by of.) LME.
Ld Macaulay The great body of the people leaned to the royalists.
a. The part of a dress down to the waist, or the portion of the dress that covers the body as distinct from the arms. See also BODICE. arch. M16.
b. A woman's usu. close-fitting stretch garment for the upper body, fastening at the crotch. L20.
A chemical retort. M16-E19.
Typography. (The breadth of) a shank of metal type from head to tail; the nominal depth of photocomposed type. L17.
III. An aggregate of individuals.
An artificial person created by legal authority; a corporation; an officially constituted organization, an assembly, an institution, a society. ME.
B. T. Washington The Alabama Legislature was in session...This body passed a resolution to adjourn. Jan Morris The Thames Water Authority, the managing body of the river.
A force of fighting men; gen. an assemblage of persons or things characterized by a common purpose or attribute; a collective mass. L16.
W. Robertson Escorted by a body of horse. J. P. Mahaffy This large and respectable body of opinion. H. J. Laski The State must live with other States, both as regards its individual members, and as a collective body.
A collection of the details of any subject; a collection of information; arch. a textbook. M17.
Addison I could wish our Royal Society would compile a Body of Natural History.
IV. A portion of matter; substance.
A separate piece of matter, a material thing. LME.
S. Johnson All attraction is increased by the approach of the attracting body. F. Hoyle All bodies collapse in one way or another when the forces inside them become large enough.
b. Geometry. A figure of three dimensions, a solid. arch. M16.
c. Anatomy & Medicine. With specifying word: a distinguishable component of structure. M19.
Substance as opp. to representation; reality. LME.
W. van T. Clark Sparks had given a kind of body..to an ideal.
A distinct form or kind of matter:
a. Each of the seven metals, gold, silver, iron, mercury, lead, tin, and copper, answering to the seven heavenly bodies (see below). Only in LME.
b. Chemistry & Mineralogy. Any kind of (solid, liquid, or gaseous) substance. arch. M16.
D. Brewster Crystallised bodies, such as nitre and arragonite.
c. Paste or clay (of a particular kind) used in porcelain manufacture. L18.
Metaphysics etc. A thing which has existence and occupies space; that which is perceptible to the senses, matter. L16.
J. S. Mill A body..may be defined, the external cause to which we ascribe our sensations. F. Bowen We cannot think of body without extension.
A compact quantity, an amount, a bulk; spec. a deposit of metalliferous ore. M17.
R. I. Murchison Another body of igneous rock lies subjacent. C. Francis The oceans and seas of the world form one continuous body of salt water.
Comparative solidity or fullness; substantial character or flavour in a material, wine, colour, etc. M17.
R. Dahl It [a wine] is far too light in the body to be from either St Emilion or Graves. J. C. Oates Her hair..was dull and lusterless, and lacked body.
Phrases: astral body: see ASTRAL adjective 3. black body: see BLACK adjective. body corporate a corporation. body of Christ (a) the community of the Christian Church, of which Christ is held to be the head; (b) = sense 3 above. body politic the State; organized society. celestial body the sun, the moon, a planet, a star, etc. dead body a corpse; over my dead body, over his dead body, etc. (hyperbol.), entirely without my etc. consent, with the strongest opposition from me etc. fruiting body: see FRUIT verb. governing body: see GOVERN verb. heavenly body the sun, the moon, a planet, a star, etc. (the seven heavenly bodies, (in medieval astrology etc.) the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus). heir of one's body, heir of the body: see HEIR noun. in a body all together, as one. keep body and soul together manage to remain alive. PITUITARY body. Platonic body: see PLATONIC adjective 1. polar body: see POLAR adjective. soul and body lashing: see SOUL noun. squire of the body: see SQUIRE noun1 1c.
Comb.: body art (a) items of jewellery or clothing worn on the body and regarded as art; (b) the practice of decorating the body by means of tattooing, piercing, etc.; (c) an artistic genre, originating in the 1970s, in which the actual body of the artist or model is integral to the work; body bag (a) a sleeping-bag; (b) a bag for carrying a corpse from the scene of warfare, an accident, a crime, etc.; body-blow a blow to the body in boxing etc.; fig. a crushing setback; bodyboard a short, light type of surfboard ridden in a prone position; bodyboarder a person who surfs on a bodyboard; body-builder (a) a person who builds vehicle bodies; (b) a person who develops the muscles of the body by systematic exercise; body-building (a) the building of vehicle bodies; (b) development of the muscles of the body by systematic exercise; body-centred adjective (of a crystal structure) in which an atom or ion occurs at each vertex and at the centre of the unit cell; body-check noun & verb (a) noun (in various sports) the placing of one's body in the way of an opponent in order to impede him; (b) verb trans. impede thus; body clock the biological clock of the human body; body-colour an opaque pigment; body count colloq. a list or total of casualties; body double a stand-in for a film actor during stunts or nude scenes; body dysmorphic disorder a psychiatric disorder in which a person becomes preoccupied with an imagined defect in their appearance; bodyguard (a member of) an escort or personal guard of a dignitary etc.; body language gestures and movements by which a person unconsciously conveys meaning; body-line (bowling) Cricket fast short-pitched bowling on the leg side, threatening the batsman's body; body louse a human louse infesting the body rather than the head; body mass index Medicine an approximate measure of whether a person is over- or underweight, calculated by dividing his or her weight in kilograms by the square of their height in metres; abbreviation BMI; body odour the (esp. unpleasant) smell of the body; body-piercing the piercing of parts of the body (other than the ear) in order to insert rings, studs, or other ornaments; body-popping (orig. US) a kind of dancing with jerky movements of the joints; body scanner a scanner designed to screen the whole body for the presence of cancer etc.; body search a search of a person's body and clothing for a hidden weapon, concealed drugs, etc.; body-servant a valet; bodyshell the metal frame of a motor or railway vehicle, to which the metal panels are attached; body shop a workshop where vehicle bodies are repaired; body-snatcher Hist. an illicit exhumer of corpses for dissection; body-snatching Hist. illicit exhumation of corpses for dissection; body-stocking a (woman's) one-piece undergarment covering the trunk and legs; bodysuit a close-fitting one-piece stretch garment, esp. worn by women for sporting activities; bodysurf verb intrans. ride a breaking wave without using a surfboard; body type: used for printing the main text of a book; body wave an artificial wave in the hair to give it fullness; body-whorl Conchology the last-formed and usu. largest whorl of a spiral shell, containing the animal itself when alive; bodywork (a) the structure of a vehicle body; (b) therapies and techniques in complementary medicine which involve touching or manipulating the body; bodyworker a practitioner of a therapy that involves bodywork.
bodyhood noun (rare) the quality of having or being a body L17.