carrion

See also: Carrion and Carrión

English

Etymology

From Middle English caroigne, borrowed from Anglo-Norman caroigne, from Vulgar Latin *carōnia, from Latin caro (“flesh”). Compare French charogne and the English doublet crone.

The regular modern English form would be *carren, *carron /ˈkæɹ.ən/ (this is found dialectally; see similar kyarn); the intervening /i/ is probably a hypercorrection based on the analogy of words like merlin/merlion.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈkæ.ɹi.ən/
  • (dialectal or obsolete) IPA(key): /ˈkæɹ.ən/[1]
  • Audio (US)(file)

Noun

carrion (usually uncountable, plural carrions)

  1. (chiefly uncountable) Dead flesh; carcasses.
    Vultures feed on carrion.
    • 1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […] (Ancient Irish Histories), Dublin: […] Society of Stationers, […] Hibernia Press, […] [b]y John Morrison, 1809, →OCLC:
      They did eat the dead carrions.
    • 1859, Charles Dickens, The Haunted House:
      He brought down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion […]
    • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, paperback edition, Vintage Classics, page 119:
      Perhaps the Purple Emperor is feasting, as Morris says, upon a mass of putrid carrion at the base of an oak tree.
  2. (countable, obsolete, derogatory) A contemptible or worthless person.

Derived terms

Translations

References
  1. Hall, Joseph Sargent (1942 March 2) “2. The Vowel Sounds of Unstressed and Partially Stressed Syllables”, in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech (American Speech: Reprints and Monographs; 4), New York: King's Crown Press, →DOI, →ISBN, § II.2, page 65.
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