corpse [ME] At one time corpses did not have to be dead. Until the early 18th century a corpse (from Latin corpus ‘body’) could be the living body of a person or animal, as in ‘We often see … a fair and beautiful corpse but a foul and ugly mind’ (Thomas Walkington, 1607). You would need to specify ‘a dead corpse’ or some similar expression if you were talking about a dead body. In time, you could simply say ‘a corpse’ and people would assume that you meant a dead person. The p used to be silent and the final e was rare before the 19th century. In fact, corpse and corps [L16th], ‘a division of an army’, are basically the same word. Latin corpus has given us several words, among them corporation [LME], corpulent [LME] or ‘fat’, corset [ME] a ‘little body’, and incorporate [LME]. A corporal [M16th] is in charge of a ‘body’ of troops.