Other forms: carcasses
A carcass is the dead body of an animal. A sheep carcass, strip the carcass, the carcass of a car.
In the meat trade it is the technical unit — carcass weight is what a butcher pays for, and it excludes head, hide and offal. Used of a person it is rude or grimly comic. Figuratively it means the empty frame of a thing, as in the carcass of a building.
1nouncarcassThe dead body of an animal.
“Vultures were tearing at the carcass of a dead zebra.”
carcass is a dead body.
Anglo-Norman carcois names a dead body; the further origin is uncertain. The spelling settled late, and carcase is still used in Britain.
Anglo-Norman
carcois
English, today
carcass
Dated from the late 13th Century; from Anglo-Norman carcois, possibly related to Old French charcois. Cognate with French carcasse. But cf. also ae 𐬐𐬀𐬵𐬭𐬐𐬁𐬯𐬀 (“vulture”), and pal (“vulture”), whence Persian کرکس (“vulture”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA