rigor mortis

Definition

Temporary stiffness of the body's muscles and joints following death.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from New Latin rigor mortis (literally “stiffness of death”). First attested in 1842.

Example Sentences

• "Such are the principal phenomena observed during that form of contraction which I conceive to be analogous to the rigor mortis..."
• "Then we carried in poor Austin from the yard. His muscles were set as hard as a board in the most exaggerated rigor mortis, while the contraction of the fibres had drawn his mouth into a hard sardonic grin."
• "[…]an unpublished writer who, for all his ambition and flashes of talent, had not been trained in the rigours (nor rigor mortises, for that matter) of a university education."