Other forms: morgues
A morgue is the cold room where bodies are kept before burial. Taken to the morgue, the hospital morgue, identify him at the morgue.
Mortuary is the commoner British word for the same room. In journalism the morgue is the newspaper's archive of old cuttings, which is a piece of trade slang worth knowing. The word is French, from a room in a Paris prison where bodies were displayed for identification.
1nounmorgueThe cold room where bodies are kept.
“The police asked her to go to the morgue to identify the body.”
2nounnewspapersA newspaper's archive of old cuttings.
“The reporter searched the newspaper's morgue for old stories about the mayor.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
morgue is a room.
French morgue named a room in a Paris prison where bodies were displayed for identification.
French
morgue
English, today
morgue
Borrowed from French morgue. The second sense developed from the first, via "a prison examination room", probably with reference to the haughty attitude of the jailers.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA