body

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See also: Body

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English bodi, bodiȝ, from Old English bodiġ (body, trunk, chest, torso, height, stature), from Proto-West Germanic *bodag (body, trunk), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewdʰ- (to be awake, observe). Cognate with Old High German botah (whence Swabian Bottich (body, torso)).

Pronunciation

Noun

body (countable and uncountable, plural bodies)

  1. Physical frame.
    1. The physical structure of a human or animal seen as one single organism.
      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.
      The body is driven by desires, but the soul is at peace.
    3. A corpse.
      Her body was found at four o'clock, just two hours after the murder.
    4. (archaic or informal except in compounds) A person.
      • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A 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[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
        “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).
      The boxer took a blow to the body.
    2. The largest or most important part of anything, as distinct from its appendages or accessories.
      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.
      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.
    (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:) A bodysuit.
    1. (programming) The code of a subroutine, contrasted to its signature and parameters.
      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.
      I was escorted from the building by a body of armed security guards.
    2. An organisation, company or other authoritative group.
      The local train operating company is the managing body for this section of track.
    3. A unified collection of details, knowledge or information.
      We have now amassed a body of evidence which points to one conclusion.
  4. Material entity.
    1. Any physical object or material thing.
      All bodies are held together by internal forces.
    2. (uncountable) Substance; physical presence.
      • 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.).
    • 1989 August 12, Caroline Foty, “Hindsights”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 5, page 7:
      "I'd Be Lost Without You" seems somewhat out of place from a vocal viewpoint — Lewis's slightly reedy middle soprano is very expressive and absolutely true, but doesn't have enough dark body to fully deal with the torchy melody.
      The red wine, sadly, lacked body.
    1. 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:
        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

Derived terms

Pages starting with “body”.

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

See also

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 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 (comic):
        I keep getting bodied by kids half my age.

References

Anagrams

Czech

Pronunciation

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

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English body.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈbɔ.di/
  • (file)
  • Hyphenation: bo‧dy

Noun

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

  1. A leotard.
  2. Body, substance.

Finnish

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Etymology

From English body.

Pronunciation

Noun

body

  1. snapsuit, diaper shirt, onesies (infant bodysuit)
    Synonym: potkupuku
  2. bodystocking (one-piece article of lingerie)
    Synonyms: bodi, body stocking

Declension

Pronunciation ˈbody:

Inflection of body (Kotus type 1/valo, no gradation)
nominative body bodyt
genitive bodyn bodyjen
partitive bodya bodyja
illative bodyyn bodyihin
singular plural
nominative body bodyt
accusative nom. body bodyt
gen. bodyn
genitive bodyn bodyjen
partitive bodya bodyja
inessive bodyssa bodyissa
elative bodysta bodyista
illative bodyyn bodyihin
adessive bodylla bodyilla
ablative bodylta bodyilta
allative bodylle bodyille
essive bodyna bodyina
translative bodyksi bodyiksi
abessive bodytta bodyitta
instructive bodyin
comitative See the possessive forms below.
Possessive forms of body (Kotus type 1/valo, no gradation)
first-person singular possessor
singular plural
nominative bodyni bodyni
accusative nom. bodyni bodyni
gen. bodyni
genitive bodyni bodyjeni
partitive bodyani bodyjani
inessive bodyssani bodyissani
elative bodystani bodyistani
illative bodyyni bodyihini
adessive bodyllani bodyillani
ablative bodyltani bodyiltani
allative bodylleni bodyilleni
essive bodynani bodyinani
translative bodykseni bodyikseni
abessive bodyttani bodyittani
instructive
comitative bodyineni
second-person singular possessor
singular plural
nominative bodysi bodysi
accusative nom. bodysi bodysi
gen. bodysi
genitive bodysi bodyjesi
partitive bodyasi bodyjasi
inessive bodyssasi bodyissasi
elative bodystasi bodyistasi
illative bodyysi bodyihisi
adessive bodyllasi bodyillasi
ablative bodyltasi bodyiltasi
allative bodyllesi bodyillesi
essive bodynasi bodyinasi
translative bodyksesi bodyiksesi
abessive bodyttasi bodyittasi
instructive
comitative bodyinesi
first-person plural possessor
singular plural
nominative bodymme bodymme
accusative nom. bodymme bodymme
gen. bodymme
genitive bodymme bodyjemme
partitive bodyamme bodyjamme
inessive bodyssamme bodyissamme
elative bodystamme bodyistamme
illative bodyymme bodyihimme
adessive bodyllamme bodyillamme
ablative bodyltamme bodyiltamme
allative bodyllemme bodyillemme
essive bodynamme bodyinamme
translative bodyksemme bodyiksemme
abessive bodyttamme bodyittamme
instructive
comitative bodyinemme
second-person plural possessor
singular plural
nominative bodynne bodynne
accusative nom. bodynne bodynne
gen. bodynne
genitive bodynne bodyjenne
partitive bodyanne bodyjanne
inessive bodyssanne bodyissanne
elative bodystanne bodyistanne
illative bodyynne bodyihinne
adessive bodyllanne bodyillanne
ablative bodyltanne bodyiltanne
allative bodyllenne bodyillenne
essive bodynanne bodyinanne
translative bodyksenne bodyiksenne
abessive bodyttanne bodyittanne
instructive
comitative bodyinenne
third-person possessor
singular plural
nominative bodynsa bodynsa
accusative nom. bodynsa bodynsa
gen. bodynsa
genitive bodynsa bodyjensa
partitive bodyaan
bodyansa
bodyjaan
bodyjansa
inessive bodyssaan
bodyssansa
bodyissaan
bodyissansa
elative bodystaan
bodystansa
bodyistaan
bodyistansa
illative bodyynsa bodyihinsa
adessive bodyllaan
bodyllansa
bodyillaan
bodyillansa
ablative bodyltaan
bodyltansa
bodyiltaan
bodyiltansa
allative bodylleen
bodyllensa
bodyilleen
bodyillensa
essive bodynaan
bodynansa
bodyinaan
bodyinansa
translative bodykseen
bodyksensa
bodyikseen
bodyiksensa
abessive bodyttaan
bodyttansa
bodyittaan
bodyittansa
instructive
comitative bodyineen
bodyinensa

Further reading

Italian

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

Polish Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia pl

Etymology

Pseudo-anglicism, derived from bodysuit.

Pronunciation

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

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English body.

Noun

body n (plural body-uri)

  1. bodysuit

Declension

Scots

Alternative forms

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

Noun

body m (plural bodys or bodies)

  1. Alternative spelling of bodi

Further reading