morgue
UK /mɔːɡ/ · US /moɹɡ/ noun
Forms morgues
- noun (archaic) A supercilious or haughty attitude; arrogance.
- noun A building or room where dead bodies are kept before their proper burial or cremation, (now) particularly in legal and law enforcement contexts.
- noun (dated, slang) The archive and background information division of a newspaper.
Synonyms
Etymology
Borrowed from French morgue. The second sense developed from the first, via "a prison examination room", probably with reference to the haughty attitude of the jailers.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A place where the bodies of persons found dead are exposed, that they may be identified, or claimed by their friends; a deadhouse.
Etymology [F.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “morgue”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details