body snatcher
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.35 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One who abducts or controls another's body, such as a slaver, psychic, or human resources agent.
noun
One who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves, a resurrection man.
noun
A graverobber who steals bodies or body parts.
Example Sentences
- "They proved to be two of those Body-Snatchers, called hired Constables, who were patrolling the Fields."
- "Look here, my body-snatchers, you have unlawfully abridged the liberty of one of the sons of the sovereign State of New York!"
- "A black woman told Carrie not to say master and missis, because you were body-snatchers and slave-drivers."
- "Girls who can't let a man go by without reaching out for him. That's what I call them—body snatchers."
- "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’."
- "South claims hundreds abducted by North Korea's ‘body snatchers’."
Etymology
From body + snatcher. Later use highly influenced by the novel The Body Snatchers (1955) and its repeated adaptation into film, wherein aliens begin replacing humans with pod people.
Usage
- Derogatory
- Humorous
- Obsolete
- Slang
- British usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Law.