body definition

1. Physical frame.
   1. The physical structure of a human or animal seen as one single organism. [from 9th c.]

      I saw them walking from a distance, their bodies strangely angular in the dawn light.

      • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Corinthians 12:15–20:

        If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body: is it therefore not of the body?
        And if the eare shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body: is it therefore not of the body?
        If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?
        But now hath God set the members, euery one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.
        And if they were all one member, where were the body?
        But now are they many members, yet but one body.

   2. The fleshly or corporeal nature of a human, as opposed to the spirit or soul. [from 13th c.]

      The body is driven by desires, but the soul is at peace.

   3. A corpse. [from 13th c.]

      Her body was found at four o'clock, just two hours after the murder.

   4. (archaic or informal except in compounds) A person. [from 13th c.]
      • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC:

        Folio Society 1973, page 463:

        Indeed, if it belonged to a poor body, it would be another thing; but so great a lady, to be sure, can never want it […]

      • 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 28, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC:

        Sometime I've set right down and eat WITH him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing.

      • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

        “Well,” I says, “I cal'late a body could get used to Tophet if he stayed there long enough.” ¶ She flared up; the least mite of a slam at Doctor Wool was enough to set her going.

      What's a body gotta do to get a drink around here?

   5. (sociology) A human being, regarded as marginalized or oppressed.
      • 1999, Devon Carbado, Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality: A Critical Reader, page 87:

        This, of course, was not about the State, but it was certainly an invasion: black bodies acting out in a public domain circumscribed by a racist culture. The Garvey movement presents an example of black bodies transgressing racialized spatial boundaries.

      • 2012, Trystan T. Cotten, Transgender Migrations, page 3:

        In doing so, Haritaworn also rethinks the marginality of transgender bodies and practices in queer movements and spaces.

      • 2016, Laura Harrison, Brown Bodies, White Babies, page 5:

        As the title suggests, this project is particularly interested in how race intersects with reproductive technologies—how brown bodies are deployed in the creation of white babies.

2. Main section.
   1. The torso, the main structure of a human or animal frame excluding the extremities (limbs, head, tail). [from 9th c.]

      The boxer took a blow to the body.

   2. The largest or most important part of anything, as distinct from its appendages or accessories. [from 11th c.]

      The bumpers and front tyres were ruined, but the body of the car was in remarkable shape.

   3. (archaic) The section of a dress extending from the neck to the waist, excluding the arms. [from 16th c.]

      Penny was in the scullery, pressing the body of her new dress.

   4. The content of a letter, message, or other printed or electronic document, as distinct from signatures, salutations, headers, and so on. [from 17th c.]

   (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:) A bodysuit. [from 19th c.]

   1. (programming) The code of a subroutine, contrasted to its signature and parameters. [from 20th c.]

      In many programming languages, the method body is enclosed in braces.

   2. (architecture, of a church) nave.
3. Coherent group.
   1. A group of people having a common purpose or opinion; a mass. [from 16th c.]

      I was escorted from the building by a body of armed security guards.

   2. An organisation, company or other authoritative group. [from 17th c.]

      The local train operating company is the managing body for this section of track.

   3. A unified collection of details, knowledge or information. [from 17th c.]

      We have now amassed a body of evidence which points to one conclusion.

4. Material entity.
   1. Any physical object or material thing. [from 14th c.]

      All bodies are held together by internal forces.

   2. (uncountable) Substance; physical presence. [from 17th c.]
      • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:

        The voice had an extraordinary sadness. Pure from all body, pure from all passion, going out into the world, solitary, unanswered, breaking against rocks—so it sounded.

      We have given body to what was just a vague idea.

   3. (uncountable) Comparative viscosity, solidity or substance (in wine, colours etc.). [from 17th c.]

      The red wine, sadly, lacked body.

   4. An agglomeration of some substance, especially one that would be otherwise uncountable.
      • 1806 June 26, Thomas Paine, “The cause of Yellow Fever and the means of preventing it, in places not yet infected with it, addressed to the Board of Health in America”, in The political and miscellaneous works of Thomas Paine, page 179:

        In a gentle breeze, the whole body of air, as far as the breeze extends, moves at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour; in a high wind, at the rate of seventy, eighty, or an hundred miles an hour […]

      • 2012 March 19, Helge Løseth, Nuno Rodrigues, Peter R. Cobbold, “World's largest extrusive body of sand?”, in Geology, volume 40, number 5:

        Using three-dimensional seismic and well data from the northern North Sea, we describe a large (10 km³) body of sand and interpret it as extrusive.

      • 2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns‎^[1]:

        The huge body of ice is in the southeastern edge of a Central Asian region called the Third Pole.

      The English Channel is a body of water lying between Great Britain and France.

5. (printing) The shank of a type, or the depth of the shank (by which the size is indicated).

   a nonpareil face on an agate body

   • 1992, Mary Kay Duggan, Italian Music Incunabula: Printers and Type, page 99:

     The stemless notes could have been cast on a body as short as 4 mm but were probably cast on bodies of the standard 14 mm size for ease of composition.

6. (geometry) A three-dimensional object, such as a cube or cone.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:body
• See also Thesaurus:corpse

Derived terms

Pages starting with “body”.

Translations

See also

• corporal
• corporeal

Verb

body (third-person singular simple present bodies, present participle bodying, simple past and past participle bodied)

1. (transitive, often with forth) To give body or shape to something.
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

     And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.

   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 175:

     The drama of the storehouse on earth has its counterpart in Heaven, and if we accept the insights of both Jacobsen and von Dechend, we can see that the myth is bodying forth a principle which will later be expressed in the Hermetic axiom, "As above, so below." In fact, it is precisely this relationship between above and below that the myth explores.

2. To construct the bodywork of a car.
3. (transitive) To embody.
   • 1955, Philip Larkin, Toads:

     I don't say, one bodies the other / One's spiritual truth; / But I do say it's hard to lose either, / When you have both.

4. (transitive, slang, African-American Vernacular) To murder someone.
   1. (by extension) To utterly defeat someone.
      • 2023, “Gaming at 24”, in hyperx‎^[2] (comic):

        I keep getting bodied by kids half my age.

References

• Jonathon Green (2023), “body v.”, in Green's Dictionary of Slang

Anagrams

• BYOD, Boyd, Doby, do by

Czech body definition

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈbodɪ]
• Rhymes: -odɪ
• Hyphenation: bo‧dy

Etymology 1

Borrowed from English body, bodysuit.

Noun

body n (indeclinable)

1. bodysuit, leotard

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Noun

body

1. nominative/accusative/vocative/instrumental plural of bod

Anagrams

• doby

Dutch body definition

Etymology

Borrowed from English body.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɔ.di/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: bo‧dy

Noun

body m (plural body's, diminutive body'tje n)

1. A leotard.
2. Body, substance.

Finnish body definition

Etymology

From English body.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbody/, [ˈbo̞dy]
• IPA^(key): /ˈbodi/, [ˈbo̞di]
• Rhymes: -ody
• Homophone: bodi
• Syllabification^(key): bo‧dy

Noun

body

1. snapsuit, diaper shirt, onesies (infant bodysuit)

Declension

Pronunciation ˈbody:

Further reading

• "body" in Kielitoimiston sanakirja (Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish).

Italian body definition

Etymology

Pseudo-anglicism, a clipping of English bodysuit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɔ.di/
• Rhymes: -ɔdi
• Hyphenation: bò‧dy

Noun

body m (invariable)

1. leotard

   Synonym: calzamaglia

Further reading

• body in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Polish body definition

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English body(suit).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɔ.dɨ/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔdɨ
• Syllabification: bo‧dy

Noun

body n (indeclinable)

1. bodysuit, leotard

Further reading

• body in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• body in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Romanian body definition

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English body.

Noun

body n (plural body-uri)

1. bodysuit

Declension

Scots body definition

Alternative forms

• bodie

Etymology

From Middle English body, bodiȝ, from Old English bodiġ, bodeġ (“body, trunk, chest, torso, height, stature”).

Noun

body (plural bodies)

1. body
2. person, human being

Spanish body definition

Noun

body m (plural bodys or bodies)

1. Alternative spelling of bodi

Further reading

• “body”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014