carrions

Noun

carrion (usually uncountable, plural carrions)

1. (usually) Rotting flesh of a dead animal or person.
   • Vultures feed on carrion.
2. (figuratively, usually) Corrupt or horrid matter.
   • [T]here are melancholy sceptics with a taste for carrion who batten on the hideous facts in history,—persecutions, inquisitions, St. Bartholomew massacres, devilish lives, […]1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Courage”, in Society and Solitude. Twelve Chapters, Boston, Mass.: Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 247
3. (figuratively, obsolete, usually) Filth, garbage.
4. (derogatory, figuratively, obsolete, usually) The flesh of a living human body; also (Christianity), sinful human nature.
   • Shy[lock]. My ovvne fleſh and blood to rebell. / Salan[io]. Out vpon it old carrion, rebels it as theſe yeares.c. 1596–1598 (date written), W[illiam] Shakespeare, The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. […] (First Quarto), [London]: […] J[ames] Roberts [for Thomas Heyes], published 1600, →OCLC, [Act...
5. (countable, obsolete, uncountable, usually) A dead body; a carcass, a corpse.
   • [T]hey looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eate the dead carrions, happy where they could finde them, yea, and one another soone after, insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; […]1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […]...
6. (countable, figuratively, obsolete, uncountable, usually) An animal which is in poor condition or worthless; also, an animal which is a pest or vermin.
   • [L]ords will by their wils / Rather haue one wodcock, than a thouſand dawſe. / Wodcocks ar meate, daws ar carren, wey this clauſe. / In dede ſir (ſaid the daw) I muſt needes agree, / Lords loue to eate you, and not to eate mee.1550, John Heywood, “The Woodcock and the Daw”, in An Hundred Epigrammes. […], London: […] Thomas Berthelet, →OCLC, signature [Cvi], verso

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