Word.ws English Dictionary

exquisite corpse

exquisite corpse noun: a collective art game in which several collaborating artists assemble a sentence or image, usually by following a prompt, or being allowed to see the only last contribution.

Noun

exquisite corpse (countable and uncountable, plural exquisite corpses)

  1. (uncountable) A collective art game in which several collaborating artists assemble a sentence or image, usually by following a prompt, or being allowed to see the only last contribution.
    • […]had collaborated on the Surrealist game of cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse), in which artists made collective collages of words or images.1983, Janet A. Kaplan, Remedios Varo (1913–1963): Spanish-born Mexican Painter, Woman Among the Surrealists, page 25
  2. (countable) A sentence or image created as a result of this game.
    • Breton insisted that the collective endeavor to compose an exquisite corpse leads to a pool of epiphanies, analogies, connections that would have been impossible otherwise.2019, Kate Haanzalik, Nathalie Virgintino, editors, Exquisite Corpse: Studio Art-Based Writing Practices in the Academy, Parlor Press LLC, →ISBN, page xvi

Forms of exquisite corpse

pluralexquisite corpses

Origin of exquisite corpse

Calque of French cadavre exquis. First coined in 1925 by surrealists André Breton, Marcel Duhamel, Jacques Prévert, and Yves Tanguy in a similar manner to consequences; the first example was constructed from the following prompt: Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau (“the exquisite corpse will drink new wine”).

Questions about exquisite corpse

What does exquisite corpse mean?
Exquisite corpse means a collective art game in which several collaborating artists assemble a sentence or image, usually by following a prompt, or being allowed to see the only last contribution.
What part of speech is exquisite corpse?
Exquisite corpse is a noun.
What is the plural of exquisite corpse?
The plural of exquisite corpse is exquisite corpses.

Words near exquisite corpse in the dictionary

  1. exquire
  2. exquired
  3. exquires
  4. exquiring
  5. exquisite
  6. exquisite corpse
  7. exquisite corpses
  8. exquisitely
  9. exquisiteness
  10. exquisitenesses
  11. exquisites

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: exquisite corpse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “exquisite corpse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/exquisite_corpse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.