resurrection man
resurrection man noun: a man who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves; a graverobber.
Noun
resurrection man (plural resurrection men)
- A man who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves; a graverobber.
- Persons (under the name of resurrection-men) continue their business, getting from 1 guinea to 5 or 6, according to the value set upon the corpse they take up.1781, “R. King”, in Compl. Mod. London Spy, section 106
- Earlier exhumations seem to have caused very little popular concern;... but later... the trade of ‘resurrection man’ became commoner, and attracted the lowest dregs of the vicious classes.1910, Encyclopædia Britannica, I. 937/2
- Synonyms:
- burker, Burkite, resurrectioner, resurrectionist, bodysnatcher, body snatcher
Synonyms of resurrection man
Forms of resurrection man
| plural | resurrection men |
|---|---|
| alternative form | resurrection-man |
Origin of resurrection man
resurrection (“the act of rising from the dead and becoming alive again”) + man
Questions about resurrection man
- What does resurrection man mean?
- Resurrection man means a man who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves; a graverobber.
- What part of speech is resurrection man?
- Resurrection man is a noun.
- What is the plural of resurrection man?
- The plural of resurrection man is resurrection men.
Words near resurrection man in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: resurrection man (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.
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Cite this entry: “resurrection man.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/resurrection_man. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.