Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Suggestive of death; corpselike: a cadaverous odor.
- adj. Of corpselike pallor; pallid: "I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window” ( Charles Dickens).
- adj. Emaciated; gaunt: a cadaverous mongrel picking through the garbage.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pertaining to a dead body; especially, having the appearance or color of the body of a dead person; pale; wan; ghastly.
Wiktionary
- adj. Corpselike; hinting of death; imitating a cadaver
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having the appearance or color of a dead human body; pale; ghastly.
- adj. Of or pertaining to, or having the qualities of, a dead body.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or relating to a cadaver or corpse
- adj. very thin especially from disease or hunger or cold
Etymologies
- cadaver + -ous (Wiktionary)
Examples
“I keep thinking the word cadaverous but I know that’s wrong because I just like saying cadavers.”
“Those hells are therefore named accordingly; some are called cadaverous, some stercoraceous, some urinous, and so on.”
Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom
“Before he went, he formally thanked his wife -- who hardly spoke to him unless she was obliged -- for her attention to his mother, and then lingered a little, looking no less "cadaverous," certainly, than when he had gone away, and apparently desiring to say more.”
“Later, they would fall out over Louisa's desire to wear rouge in order to attenuate the "cadaverous" pallor of her complexion, which offended her husband's puritan sensibilities.”
“Her cadaverous face drives her parents and friends to despair, but even so she refuses to feed herself.”
“Vampires uncloaked, from ‘Nosferatu’ to ‘Twilight’ www. buffalonews.com: He was a tall, cadaverous old man with white hair and eyebrows so bushy they almost created a unibrow.”
VAMPIRE TOURS AND VAMPIRES UNCLOAKED! | Open Society Book Club Discussions and Reviews
“Obama was always far more popular than the cadaverous Mr. Nelson.”
The Huffington Post: Joseph A. Palermo: Citizens United -- Game Changer
“In the past I was used to seeing a statue or banner of the Virgen de Guadalupe hanging from a bus's rear-view mirror, but now often the cadaverous figure of La Santa Muerte has become more and more common.”
“I highlight the merits of pickling chicken feet only because poultry claws take on an intriguingly cadaverous look when pickled.”
“These benighted souls have no idea how cadaverous and ghostly their ‘sanity’ appears as the intense throng of Dionysiac revelers sweeps past them p.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cadaverous’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
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Miss Polly had a dolly who was...
sick, sickly, ill, unwell, under the weather, unhealthy, off colour, bedridden, diseased, infected, contagious, queasy and 14 more...
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beyond pale
Words meaning or invoking the different aspects of pale.
Not just colour, but also the ideas of impermanence, illness, weakness. (Just not the two noun forms – a thin strip of metal or woo...pale, pallid, wan, light, misty, ethereal, cream, dim, white, thin, waning, colourless and 62 more...
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Unfamiliar words from Cat's Cradle by...
conveyances, folly, anecdotes, parable, flue, dawdling, bough, spiraea, illustrious, unsung, enterprising, loafed and 116 more...
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On The Road
It's a book by Jack Kerouac
Vague, jalopy, naïve, emaciated, vindicate, hysterical, Obsequious, Schopenhauer, dichotomy, jargon, phosphorescence, lout and 109 more...
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A Refined Lexicon
ambivalence, ambivalent, equivocal, equivocation, equivocate, prevaricate, prevarication, quietude, quiescent, quiescence, vanquish, pluviosity and 137 more...
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apjoseph's words
insurmountable, ubiquitous, unequivocal, incumbent, asinine, amenable, sycophants, precarious, malevolent, gregarious, raison detra, nefarious and 200 more...
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No Dearth of Deadly Designations
catafalque, cenotaph, necropolis, sepulcher, sarcophagus, mausoleum, reliquary, ossuary, necrosis, cadaver, cadaverous, pyre and 103 more...
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Real words that I love
Words that make me happy in my pants AND have a place in the dictionary.
enervate, efficacious, basilisk, minotaur, elfin, elephantine, schadenfreude, enigma, emasculate, acidic, appalling, ridiculous and 102 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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Miss Sunshine
she's such a joy.
bereaved, bitter, cheerless, dejected, depressed, despairing, despondent, disconsolate, dismal, distressed, doleful, downcast and 405 more...
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thekatespanos's list
pomposity, gaggle, scintilla, lemming, bilk, vanquish, conflate, plenary, verisimilitude, perspicacious, rattletrap, obdurate and 325 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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collection
sanguine, vie, antebellum, glacial, treacly, iconoclast, lissom, anathema, serendipity, parsimonious, histrionic, contemptuous and 279 more...
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samuraizack's Words
floccinaucinihili..., pneumonoultramicr..., bombastic, existentialistic, velocipede, aglet, anatomical snuffbox, wonk, tang, funambulist, quakebuttock, flews and 390 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cadaverous.
madmouth see also its quainly spelled cousin cadav'rous May 14, 2009