- Used to describe an exhibit of animals and ecosystems around the world in the Denver Museum of Natural Science in which a stuffed jackrabbit was used in a scene involving a hawk killing a jackrabbit. The level of dead-ness felt a little excessive, hence the invention of this word to describe the scene. Possibly influenced by similar exaggeratedly emotive words such as “terrific”.
cadaverific
adjective; derivation
very extremely and obviously dead, to a greater extent than simply not being alive anymore, depicted as dead on multiple levels
Etymology : “cadaver” + “ify” + “ic”. “cadaver” meaning “dead body”, “ify” as a verb-forming morpheme meaning “to make”, and “ic” as an adjectival morpheme
Source : “The animal’s already dead and stuffed – did they really need to set it up so it looked dead in the exhibit too? That’s more than extremely dead – it’s like, cadaverific.” (conversation with NREL interns at Denver Museum of Natural Science trip, July 2016)
Last modified: 9 December 2016