carrion
Meanings
- Rotting flesh of a dead animal or person.
- Corrupt or horrid matter.
- Filth, garbage.
- The flesh of a living human body; also (Christianity), sinful human nature.
- A dead body; a carcass, a corpse.
- An animal which is in poor condition or worthless; also, an animal which is a pest or vermin.
- A contemptible or worthless person.
- Pertaining to, or made up of, rotting flesh.
- Disgusting, horrid, rotten.
- Of the living human body, the soul, etc.: fleshly, mortal, sinful.
- Very thin; emaciated, skeletonlike.
- Of or pertaining to death.
- A surname.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English caroyne (“corpse, carrion, something disgusting”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman careine, caroigne, charogne, and Old French charoigne, Northern Old French caˈronië, caroine, caroigne (modern French charogne), probably from Vulgar Latin *carōnia, from Latin caro (“flesh”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off, sever; to divide, separate”)) + -ia (suffix forming nouns). Doublet of crone. The regular modern English form would be *carren, *carron /ˈkæɹən/ (this is found dialectally; see similar kyarn); the intervening /i/ is either a hypercorrection based on the analogy of words like merlin/merlion or, more likely, represents metathesis of the last element of the diphthong in caroyne. The adjective is derived from the noun.