Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Among the Romans, one who carried out the dead in the evening for burial.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Rom. Antiq.) One who carried out the dead bodies of the poor at night for burial.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun historical One who carried out the dead bodies of the poor at night for burial.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Latin
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Examples
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(_Necrophorus vespillo_) buries a mole of forty times its own size in two days in order to deposit its eggs in it and insure nourishment for the future brood (Gleditsch, _Physik.
Introduction to the Science of Sociology Robert Ezra Park 1926
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"Clairville," says the author, "reports that he saw a _Necrophorus vespillo_, who, wishing to bury a dead Mouse and finding the soil on which the body lay too hard, went to dig a hole at some distance, in soil more easily displaced.
The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869
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