• Exhumer

    Full definition of exhumer

    Noun

    exhumer

    (plural exhumers)
    1. One who exhumes.
      • 1835, William Light, The Last Voyage, p. 346:...he had also satisfied his mind that it had been done consistently with the rights of man, although neither Paine, nor the exhumer of his bones had ever ventured into his country, to instil into the ductile minds of the natives the principles of their philosophy.
      • 1848, William Stirling Maxwell, Annals of the Artists of Spain, p. 992:Lucia del Monte, in that city he painted a picture representing Pope St. Pasquale, a great church-builder and exhumer of holy corpses.
      • 1910, Polynesian Society (N.Z.), Memoirs of the Polynesian Society, p. 72:As each skull was taken out, the exhumer held it up to the view of the onlookers, when a wailing cry would be heard as they greeted the remains of their dead relative.
      • 1996, Fritz Spiegl, Fritz Spiegl's Sick Notes, p. 137:Resurrectionist: ... since about 1776, an exhumer and stealer of corpses which were later (or perhaps better, sooner) sold to anatomists for dissection and research.
      • 2005, J. Patrick Greene, Medieval Monasteries, p. 56:In the medieval period monks were enthusiastic exhumers of the mortal remains of the holiest of individuals.----
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