corpse

noun

1. A dead body, especially that of a human as opposed to an animal.

   “I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, / And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, / I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, […]”

2. The dead body of any animal with flesh; the dead body of a vertebrate; a carcass.

   “Cantharidin, although readily decomposed by chemical agents, is so permanent in the body that it has been detected in the corpse of a cat eighty-four days after death.”

   “Near Smeinogorsk an octagonal tumulus has been found containing the corpse of a horse near a rectangular one with a human corpse, both within stone circles.”

   “Nelson and I landed next to the half rotted corpse of a horse full of maggots.”

3. (archaic, derogatory, sometimes)A human body in general, whether living or dead.

verb

1. (intransitive, slang)To laugh uncontrollably during a performance.

   “The rest of the day and the week were spent blocking and learning the lines. The only drama was the predictable one of being ticked off for corpsing. Rupert was quite as bad as me when it came to giggling and the tea-party scene which took place between Rupert, David Parfitt, Piers Flint-Shipman and I, was too much.”

   “There were still moments when she would halt suddenly, like an actor stranded in the middle of the stage, lines forgotten, staring goggle-eyed and making fish-mouths...Corpsing: that was the word.”

   “Poor Damian corpsed and almost forgot his next lines. The director gave him a terrific lecture, and Alan caught hell from stage management.”

2. (slang, transitive)To cause another actor to do this.