The Collaborative International Dictionary
Corpus \Cor"pus\ (-p[u^]s), n.; pl. Corpora (-p[-o]*r[.a]). A body, living or dead; the corporeal substance of a thing.
Corpus callosum (k[a^]l*l[=o]"s[u^]m); pl. Corpora callosa (-s?) [NL., callous body] (Anat.), the great band of commissural fibers uniting the cerebral hemispheres. See Brain.
Corpus Christi (kr[i^]s"t[imac]) [L., body of Christ] (R. C. Ch.), a festival in honor of the eucharist, observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.
Corpus Christi cloth. Same as Pyx cloth, under Pyx.
Corpus delicti (d[-e]*l[i^]k"t[imac]) [L., the body of the crime] (Law), the substantial and fundamental fact of the comission of a crime; the proofs essential to establish a crime.
Corpus luteum (l[=u]"t[-e]*[u^]m); pl. Corpora lutea (-[.a]). [NL., luteous body] (Anat.), the reddish yellow mass which fills a ruptured Graafian follicle in the mammalian ovary.
Corpus striatum (str[-i]*[=a]"t[u^]m); pl. Corpora striata (-t[.a]). [NL., striate body] (Anat.), a ridge in the wall of each lateral ventricle of the brain.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1832, Latin, literally "body of the offense;" not "the murder victim's body," but the basic elements that make up a crime; in the case of a murder, including the body of the murdered person.
Wiktionary
n. (context legal English) The evidence that a crime has occurred.
WordNet
n. the body of evidence that constitute the offence; the objective proof that a crime has been committed (sometimes mistakenly thought to refer to the body of a homicide victim)
Wikipedia
Corpus delicti can refer to:
- Corpus delicti, a legal term
- Corpus Delicti (band), a gothic rock band
- Corpus Delicti (novel), a 2009 novel by Juli Zeh
- Corpus Delicti (album), an album by Die Form
- "Corpus Delicti," an episode from season 6 of Law & Order
Corpus Delicti were a gothic rock band active in the early-mid 1990s. In the late 1990s, they formed as an industrial rock band called Corpus.
Two ex-Corpus Delicti (Frank & Chrys) formed "Press Gang Metropol", a rock band in the tradition of Joy Division, The Cure, Interpol, Editors, Depeche Mode, and then joined by Eric Chabaud on drums and Sébastien Pietrapiana 3rd ex Corpus Delicti on vocals. An album released in early 2012 in preparation for the D Monic Records label D Monic.net.
Usage examples of "corpus delicti".
To stick you for a murder, they got to prove what they call a corpus delicti.
While corpus delicti does not require a corpse, it is enormously more difficult to make a charge of murder stand up without one.
And nothing less than the corpus delicti will make me change my mind.
Only when the accused removed the corpus delicti from the dog's muzzle did I definitely recognize it for what it was.
Morrison's body never turned up, but I had good corpus delicti evidence.